


Miracle

by Yahtzee



Series: Father Charles [4]
Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: 1960s, Atheist Character, Catholic Character, M/M, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-04
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:45:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yahtzee/pseuds/Yahtzee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1969, Erik is having trouble dealing with Charles' rapidly increasing powers as a telepath. His daughter seems to be acquiring those powers too. When Raven returns with shocking news of her own, the delicate balance Erik's maintaining seems likely to crumble. </p><p>But it's something else entirely that turns his world upside down ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Erik stood in front of the kosher deli on 78th Street, his hands jammed into the pockets of his coat.  Ever since the phone call this afternoon, he’d questioned whether coming here was a good idea; the whole way uptown on the 1 train, he’d told himself he should get off at the next stop – the next – the one after that, head back downtown, take the train up to Westchester County and go home where he belonged.

Yet here he was, steps from the door and fifteen minutes early, pretending he wasn’t going to go inside.

 _You’re not doing anything wrong_ , he told himself, and it was true. Erik harbored not one doubt as to why he was here, what his motives were for coming. Ultimately Charles would understand not only what Erik had done but also why he hadn’t told him in advance. More than that: He would agree.

And yet it felt like a transgression. Perhaps it was intended to be one. After their abrupt, emotional parting –

He sighed and stepped inside. After ordering his chicken soup with rice, he made his way to the tables in back, preparing to wait … but she was already there. 

Raven sat in a booth in the far corner. She’d always dressed at the height of fashion, and she did now, too – but no longer in designer clothes. Now her outfit proclaimed her a flower child, with woven poncho, bangle bracelets and earrings, and a paisley scarf tied around her forehead.  Despite the vibrant shades of blue, red and gold, though, the first thing that struck Erik was her sadness. She’d gained weight and lost her color, and her expression was forlorn.

Then she saw him and tensed. He knew he was standing there staring, tray in his hands like an idiot, and realized he might try acting like an adult instead.

So Erik slid into the seat opposite her. “Raven. It’s good to see you.”

“Is it?” Then she faltered. “I’m sorry. I know you meant – what I wanted to say was, it’s good to see you too.”

“Okay.” Well over a year since she’d left the mansion, and in all that time they’d had only three postcards, none of which gave any more information than that she was alive and sent all her love to Jean – and yet Erik knew this wasn’t the time to press her. If he did that, Raven would only pull back again.

Her gaze flickered up to his, briefly. “You didn’t call Charles, right?”

“No, I did as you asked.” But he wanted to be clear. “I’ll tell him everything as soon as I get home.”

She wouldn’t meet his eyes any longer.  “Is that necessary? Reporting me?”

Had she still hoped, on some level, that Erik would want to keep secrets from Charles, secrets about her? “I’m hardly reporting you. Charles and I are completely honest with one another. You know that.”

Not that Erik had any choice in the matter, these days…

“You didn’t tell him you were coming, though. Is that ‘completely honest’?”

“I can be honest with Charles and still respect your wishes. Why are you challenging me on this? That can’t be why you wanted us to meet. Just to pick a fight.”

Raven slumped in her booth. “Picking fights is easier, sometimes.”

“I know.” And he did. Erik had been often been guilty of the same tactic – going on the offensive rather than facing something difficult. Charles had been right when he’d said Erik and Raven were alike.

He was going to ask about her, then, and perhaps Raven saw it, because she hurriedly said, “How’s Jean?”

“So much taller you wouldn’t believe it.” Somewhere in the last year, the toddler he and Charles had taken in had transformed into a little girl who was very much her own person. “Smart as a whip. When she grows up, she says she wants to be either a doctor or Batgirl.” For a moment, Raven came close to smiling. Erik took it as a sign of progress.  “Working hard with Charles.”

“What do you mean, working hard?”

“You left just before we realized,” Erik said, as though he’d had any part in the realization. “She shares Charles’ gift. The ability to see into the minds of others.”

Raven just stared at him; she’d never been wholly convinced about Charles’ abilities. No wonder, given how much she’d managed to hide from her brother. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“That’s just – play pretend. Come on.” She tossed her hair. “Jean loves her daddy. She wants to be like him. That’s all.”

“I don’t think so.”

If Raven paid that any heed, she gave no sign. “So they’re talking about Jesus all the time. You must love that.”

They were. He didn’t. But Erik knew better than to agree out loud. At the moment it felt as though it would be dangerous to say anything at all.

The disquiet that had been slowly building within Erik ever since the revelation about Jean was near to boiling now, very near the surface. He was close, so close, to breaking down – to speaking every wild thought that crackled inside his head: _It’s not like before, when Charles just sensed things about you. He’s better at it now, and Jean too, because they get to practice. Now they respond to questions I haven’t asked out loud, and they wake up screaming from my nightmares even when I don’t, and as much as I love him I never prepared myself for this. How did you lock Charles out? How? Teach me!_

Instead he started on his soup before it got cold.

For a few moments – minutes, really – they ate their dinners without speaking. All around them plates and glasses clinked, winter boots thudded on mustard-colored tile, and conversations in both English and Yiddish were shouted loud enough to be heard over it all.  Erik only glanced up at Raven a couple of times, and thought she didn’t glance at him once.

Finally she said, “I guess Charles is all better by now.”

“No, he’s not.” That got her attention quickly enough, but Erik hadn’t said it to be shocking; it was no more than the truth. “His strength isn’t what it ought to be. His lungs aren’t what they ought to be, either. In winter he gets sick, and last year we thought his flu might turn into pneumonia. We kept him out of the hospital, at least.” Erik sighed heavily. “Also, his knee never improved very much. He needs help to walk for any real distance.”

Raven stared at him, her eyes uncomprehending. Perhaps it was too much to take in quickly; more than a year later, Erik still struggled to accept it himself. All she could say was, “He’s still recovering?”

“He’s recovered as much as he ever will, Raven. After sepsis, apparently the body is never the same. The nurse told me how rare it is for anyone as sick as Charles was to survive. Most of the ones who do are invalids, and often they suffer brain damage. At least Charles is himself.”

“Christ.” She covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, agitated and unsure.  “How is he taking it?”

He was the one who nearly smiled now. “Like Charles. Thankful for what he has. So cheerful sometimes you want to shake him. He’s a harder man now in some ways, but hasn’t lost his – ” What could Erik call it? That quality had no name, only shone for Erik as brilliant and constant as the full moon in a night otherwise pitch black. “He hasn’t lost it. Still hopes for the best. Instead of a cane, he carries that blackthorn walking stick your grandfather brought back from Scotland. Says it looks dashing, and sometimes it actually does.”

“Which leaves you to be the angry one.”

Raven had seen through to the heart of it immediately.  For a moment, he remembered their friendship as it had been – intimate, trusting, rich with such insights given and received – and Erik missed Raven more vividly then, with her only inches away, than he had in all their time apart.

“Yes.” The roughness in his voice startled him. “I’m angry enough for both of us.”

The way her eyes glittered when she was sad, as though she were holding back tears even when she wasn’t: How had he forgotten that?  “Are you – all right?”

Erik shrugged. “Charles takes it bravely. That helps. Jean – I’m still not sure what this gift of the mind means, but it delights her.” Though he worried about Jean constantly, wondering what it meant for a small child to be exposed to the thoughts of adults around her – their anger, their cynicism, even their love. He no longer approached Charles in bed until he was absolutely positive she was asleep. “Immigrant Outreach is busier than ever, though we’ve had to adapt. Before we mostly dealt with Europeans, particularly from the Eastern Bloc. But now most people who come to us are natives of Asia or Latin America. Right now I’m trying to hire someone who speaks Vietnamese. Charles picked up a little while he was over there, but his health doesn’t allow him to put in longer hours than he already does.”

“And you have friends?”

“Father Jerome, of course. A war buddy of Charles’ – Armando Munoz, the one who sent us Charles’ things, do you remember? He lives in Brooklyn, drops by often.”

“I meant, friends for you. Not for – the family. For yourself.”

 _Not since you_ , Erik wanted to say. But he couldn’t. What if Raven misunderstood it, heard more than he meant by the words?  And if he said that, he would say the rest. _Did our friendship mean anything to you? Or was it just a way to get closer to me in case Charles died, a way to make sure you’d have me all to yourself?_

That wasn’t true, and he knew it, but it felt true. Even the memory of the pleasant times he’d spent with Raven had been poisoned for him. As much as he loved Charles, they couldn’t be all things to each other all the time, but he hadn’t noticed the gaps so much until he had another friend to fill them. Erik had felt lonelier since Raven had left than he ever had before.

“They’re my friends too,” he said. “I go to temple more often. And I have Charles. He’s enough.”

She took it as a rebuke, which it was, though he hadn’t known that until he spoke. Her head drooped like a wilting sunflower.  For another while, they said no more. He finished his soup; she prodded at the remains of her pastrami sandwich without actually consuming much of it.

Finally, Erik said, “You didn’t tell me how you are.”

“I’m in trouble.”

“What?”

“With the law.”

“ _What_?”

“The FBI. To be specific.”

Erik was torn between two equally powerful urges: to strangle her and to laugh. “You only called because you’re on the run?”

“Spare me the self-righteousness,” she snapped. “I’ve had enough of that from Charles for a lifetime. It’s not like you don’t have a file in J. Edgar’s cabinet after all the protests we marched in.”

He wanted to defend himself, and Charles, but he refused to be distracted. “What did you do?”

“… I robbed a couple of banks.”

If only he could have believed she were joking. “Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but did you happen to recall you’re a millionaire?”

Her cheeks flushed, and her ever-changeable face looked as fierce as a tigress. “I didn’t do it for money, Erik. The robberies were revolutionary acts. Attacks on the system. The cash we stole – we can use that to undermine the cops, the Army, every stinking pig that gets in our way.”

“You really think knocking over banks is going to change the world?”

“I had to do _something_. I marched and I protested, and I hung out in San Francisco and turned on to – the whole vibe, but it’s not enough. And you know it, down deep. I know you do. I’ve seen it in you, Erik. You’d be so glad to tear down this whole monstrosity of a world.” Raven thumped the table hard enough that his tray rattled. “If you live happily within a brutal, repressive system, then you’re part of the brutality. You’re part of the repression. I was tired of being a part of an American system that’s turning into a police state.”

Though he agreed with some of this – much of it – Erik could not let one thing go without contradicting it: “You have no idea what a police state really is. I do.”

“You know, surviving the Holocaust didn’t actually give you a morality trump card to play whenever you’ve run out of arguments.”

He jerked back, stung, but not so much that he couldn’t reply, “Forgive me. I should have bowed to your moral authority as a bank robber.”  Raven scowled, and he could tell any chance of real civility was lost. Erik got to the point: “What is it you think I should do for you?”

“I need to hide.”

“You have money of your own. Surely you can use it to lay low.”

“I swore off the money. Cut up my checks when I let that life go.”

“Instead you started robbing banks. Do you see how little sense that makes?”

“I couldn’t allow myself a way out!” Raven’s expression was almost wild, now. “There had to be no turning back.”

“But you’re here. You’re turning back.” He enjoyed rubbing it in – ugly, but true.

“No, I’m not. I just – I can’t go to prison, especially not now.  Erik, I have to get out of the country. Just do that for me and I’ll take care of the rest. I don’t even care where I go. You have connections all over the world. You arrange – visas, documents, all that kind of stuff – you can do it. I know you can.”

Of course. Even if she still had her well-traveled passport, Raven couldn’t use it without being arrested.

Erik pushed aside his anger, both the justified and the petty, and tried to think. This decision had to be made for the right reasons.

One concern was greater than any other, and in the end, it had to outweigh all the rest.

“Raven, if I help you, there’s a very real chance the FBI will find out,” he said. To his surprise, he felt a lump in his throat. All he could remember now was riding a Ferris wheel with her and Jean, Raven’s head on his shoulder, Jean squealing with joy as the nightly fireworks began. “If that happens, Immigrant Outreach would be shut down. I would go to jail, probably, and certainly I’d be deported when my jail time was done. If the FBI investigated me thoroughly, and I’d assume they would, Charles might be reported to the police for sodomy. Then Jean would be taken away, and none of us would ever see her again. Even if that were a remote risk, it’s one I wouldn’t take. I don’t think it’s remote. I think it’s pretty damned likely. If you’d thought this through, you wouldn’t even have come here. I know you care about us enough for that.”

She didn’t cry. Didn’t even flinch. Her voice was so low he could scarcely hear it over the noise in the deli when she said, “I thought it through. But I had to come.”

He kept going, refusing to be swayed. “If you want money, I can get you cash. Not much tonight, but by tomorrow – it would be enough to, I don’t know, find a cabin in the Adirondacks or the Rockies. Lay low for a while. And you could always call, or write, if you needed more. We’d never abandon you.” Charles would be with him in this; Erik already knew that. “But we can’t take a risk like that with Jean.”

“I didn’t want to – it’s just – shit.” She blinked quickly, stared into a far corner of the deli, tossed her hair. “I wasn’t going to lay this on you, but … I have to make you understand.”

Raven leaned back in her booth and shrugged back her poncho. Only then could Erik see that she hadn’t merely gained weight; she was expecting a baby.

“Don’t you dare pity me,” she whispered.

Erik shook his head, though at the moment he was too completely flummoxed for any emotion as complex as pity. The first words that came out of his mouth were, “How did you rob banks like this?”

“Nobody suspects the pregnant lady.” The joke only made her smile for a moment. “I’m good at it, Erik. A regular master of disguises. Too bad the CIA is pure evil; I’d have made a great spy.”

He wanted to ask who the father was. He wanted to cry. He wanted to hug her and tell her she didn’t have to be afraid of anything ever again. He wanted to shake her shoulders and ask her if she was on a personal crusade to find out just how much trouble a single human being could cause.

Instead he said the only thing that mattered any longer: “Come on. We’re going home.”

 

**

 

 

Charles said only, “Oh, good heavens,” and immediately wrapped Raven in an embrace. Raven hugged him back, and Erik felt as if a tight band around his chest were loosening enough for him to breathe again.  The whole time Raven poured out her troubles, Charles never flinched, never said one disapproving word, just held on to her. Why hadn’t Erik understood that was what she needed?

Of course, he couldn’t have given her that even if he had known.

“Where’s Jeanie?” Raven sniffled slightly as they walked past the stairs.

“In bed already. She went to dance class today and apparently they did tumbling. You’ll have to see her version of a cartwheel tomorrow. It was enough to make even her tired. But she’ll be so happy to find you here in the morning.” Charles clung to Raven’s arm tightly enough to both comfort her and steady himself. When his gaze darted toward Erik’s, all Erik saw there was gratitude.  No … suspicion, no doubt.

Which was gratifying. And yet – did Charles’ trust come from their relationship or the fact that he’d already read Erik’s mind?

She stopped short just as Charles punched the button and the doors slid open. “You put in an elevator?”

“The stairs aren’t so easy for me any longer,” Charles explained. “And later in life I might need a wheelchair. Much later, I hope, but we might as well be prepared. And now it’s better for you too.”

Raven glanced toward Erik, her expression stricken at the mere mention of a wheelchair. He ought to have responded to that shared emotion, but he didn’t.

“Two months?” Charles said, glancing toward her abdomen. “Thereabouts?”

“Yeah, I think that’s how long I have to go.” Raven pressed her hand against her swollen belly – but only for a moment. She never glanced downward.

They came out on the third floor, where Raven’s room was. All that time Charles was in Vietnam, Erik had never gone inside once. He’d been conscious of not going inside. That was as close as he’d ever come to understanding the thin ice he walked on, and drew Raven out on behind him.

Charles said, “You haven’t seen a doctor yet.”

“I don’t need somebody to tell me a due date; the baby comes when it comes. Don’t nag me, okay? It’s not exactly easy to get an appointment when you’re on the run.”

“You’ll have to see a physician right away.” Erik would take over the nagging; he knew Raven wouldn’t push back as hard. “We should be able to find someone.” A handful of doctors had come through Immigrant Outreach over the years; he could find someone willing to do the favor, but would it be fair to ask any of them to take the risk?

“I can handle it, Erik, don’t worry,” Charles said, responding to the unspoken question. “And Raven – don’t you worry either. Erik and I aren’t – neither of us has even considered asking to take the baby from you. We’d never do that.”

“How did you – ” Raven’s voice trailed off. “You read my mind.”

“Yes.” And Charles just lit up, like it was the most wonderful, fascinating thing in the world. “Erik told you about Jean, I see, but for the two of us – having each other, being able to test each other – it’s brought me so much farther. And Jean’s not that far behind. Already, at age five! She was even ahead for a while, until I began realizing how much her instincts had to teach me … and now I’ve frightened you.”

Raven backed toward her door, shaking her head. “Oh, my God – what are you?”

“Don’t say that,” Erik snapped. “He’s not a circus freak. Don’t treat him like one.”

“You’re even more scared of him than I am, and I know it even if you don’t.” She retreated into her room, shouting, “Get out of my head!”

The door slammed shut so hard that each of them tensed and glanced downward, toward Jean’s room – a parent’s reflex when a child is sleeping. But Jean didn’t stir.

Then they simply stood in the doorway for a few moments, silent and stunned.

Erik murmured, “Will she stay until morning?”

“She’ll stay.”

They made their way to the study. By now Erik almost didn’t have to think about slowing his steps so he wouldn’t get ahead of Charles. Although this seemed like an ideal moment to have a drink, both of them sank onto the sofa together and could hardly move.

“She can’t remain here,” Erik said. “And yet she must.”

“It’s actually safer if she does stay, now. If we helped her to run, it would be obvious that we were aiding and abetting a criminal. But if Raven’s simply come home, we can easily deny knowing anything about the robberies. Besides, the FBI must never have determined her real identity; if they had, we’d have heard about this by now. So as long as she stays inside this house, we ought to be fine.”

Erik nodded, considering all of this. “You have an unexpected criminal streak, Charles.”

“Too bad I didn’t stay in the church, then. I’d have wound up a cardinal at least.” Charles leaned on his elbow, blue eyes amused but distant. “I wish I knew how she felt about the baby.”

“Don’t you?”

Apparently Charles was too distracted to notice the tension in Erik’s voice. “For me to know, she’d have to know, and she doesn’t. Just in these past few minutes, she went from desperately wanting to raise the child from us to wishing – God forbid – wishing she’d had an abortion.”

“Are you still on about that?”

“Protecting life? Yes, Erik, I am still ‘on about that.’”

“You don’t agree with the church about contraception any longer. I thought you might finally have considered the matter for yourself.”

“I have done. I don’t disagree with the Catholic Church about everything, Erik. Not even most things. If I had, I’d hardly have become a priest. Yes, regarding contraception, I’ve come to realize that sex is meaningful, sometimes even holy, without the possibility of pregnancy. Though of course I’ve had a good teacher.” The joke gentled his words for only a moment. “But abortion is another matter altogether, as you well – oh, let’s not. We can have this argument again some other time. It’s not relevant now. Obviously Raven’s too far along.”

Acknowledging this, Erik let it go. They had enough immediate problems without arguing about theoretical ones. 

“I wouldn’t call it ‘theoretical’ when – ”

“Stop that!” Erik said – no, shouted. He regretted it so immediately, so deeply, that he would have physically pulled the words, the breath, back into his chest had it been possible. Instead, he sat there feeling foolish and exposed.

But, of course, feeling exposed was the whole problem.

Even now, even this, he wouldn’t have a chance to explain – to articulate it for Charles so that he might comprehend it better himself. Already his innermost feelings were pouring into Charles’ mind.

Charles had gone very still. “Oh. I hadn’t – oh.”

“Never mind,” Erik said, uselessly.

“Raven said you were scared of me. I thought – I was so sure she was exaggerating.”

“I’m not scared of you.” He sighed. “Don’t you sense that?” But it came out bitter rather than comforting, and made the real problem all the more clear.

“My reading minds – reading your mind – you _hate_ it.”

“Hate is far too strong a word.” Erik took Charles’ hand and squeezed it. “But – you read my thoughts all the time. Every single moment. I feel as if my mind doesn’t even belong to me anymore.”

He knew what it meant to have nothing – literally, nothing, save the clothes on his back, and those he had hated because they were symbols of his imprisonment. On the day Erik left Auschwitz, he had been without so much as a coin, a book or a toothbrush. No one who loved him had survived, no one in the whole world. And yet even then he’d been aware of owning _himself_ , his own thoughts and memories and knowledge, and felt as if it was the one thing he’d stolen from the crushing gears of the Nazi machine.

Even after Magda and Anya had died – in those terrible days when grief had scoured him down to bare nerves and it felt as if no other loss could ever matter – he had hated the stupidity and numbness that was part of his mourning. He had wanted his family back, and wanted himself back, the self he had been with them.

So he was more aware than most of what it meant to need the space and sanctity of one’s own mind.

This was what he had lost.

“I never realized,” Charles said, hardly more than a whisper. He looked stricken. “You’ve tried to hide it from me, haven’t you? Folded it up in your worries about Jean.”

“My worries about Jean are very real.” A child, knowing adult thoughts – it couldn’t be healthy. “But yes. I suppose I’ve tried to keep it – separate.” He’d allowed himself to consider the matter mostly at work, on the days Charles didn’t come in.

“Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

“I thought we were past the point of talking! You never wait for me to ask questions any longer – you leap ahead all the time, rely on what I haven’t said all the time –”

“How could I not have realized?” Was Charles regretting his insensitivity – or only questioning the limits of his power? When there was no reaction to this thought, though – not even a change in expression – Erik realized Charles was trying very hard to give him some mental privacy now. “I thought – I felt sure it was all right. We’ve always been so honest with one another.”

“That honesty meant more when it was something I gave to you. Not something you took from me.”  It came out hard as stone, but it was the first part of the argument Erik was glad of, because it got to the heart of things.

“I’m sorry.”

Clearly, Charles meant it. But just as clearly, he also felt rejected. What Erik had seen as presumption and intrusion, Charles had seen as trust. Erik had wanted his own peace of mind; Charles felt that he’d just been thrown out.

As gently as possible, Erik said, “This is another issue we shouldn’t take up right now.”

“How can we not?”

“Raven – ”

“She isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.”

“I can’t. Not tonight.” Erik was out of steam. Merely gearing up for the meeting with Raven had been exhausting enough; the tumult that had followed left him feeling wrung-out and weary. “Let’s just go to bed. Let it go, only for now.”

“All right.”

Charles leaned on Erik’s arm as they walked to bed, in silence. Then he undressed Erik tenderly and tucked him in before discarding his own clothes and slipping beneath the blankets. He waited for Erik to hold out a hand, only then curling against his side. Erik rolled Charles onto his chest, caressed his shoulder and back, rested his head so that his lips brushed Charles’ brow. He held Charles for the long minutes it took for Charles’ breathing to become deep and even, and for sleep to begin to weigh down his own thoughts.

So much was unresolved – still raw – and the path ahead was rocky. But Erik never wanted to feel that he and Charles couldn’t seek shelter in each other’s arms.

**

The whole next day at work – when he had a few free moments away from the consciousness-raising sit-in about unsafe living conditions in Chinatown – Erik considered what to do next.

He and Charles had to work out the thorny issue of his mind-reading and how it would, or wouldn’t, be handled between them from now on. But the worst possible time to do that was when Raven had just returned to the house. Her problems dwarfed theirs, and while Charles had been gentleness itself last night, it was irrational to believe that the hurt feelings spurring her departure wouldn’t arise again. Even if Raven wasn’t still in love with Erik (and he profoundly hoped not), she would still resent his rejection; Erik knew this, because he knew he was capable of behaving the same way himself. Even if Charles felt totally assured of Erik’s love (and he did, surely, even when they were fighting), his jealousy would probably bubble up at some point – and only a few moments of resentment could threaten the delicate balance it was going to require for the three of them to live together for at least two months. Meanwhile, they had to keep hiding Raven from the FBI …

Reviewing this made him tired.

 _I need a vacation_ , he thought.

And then he thought about it some more.

By the time Erik got home that evening, he felt ready to take on whatever awaited him – but he hadn’t figured on what would actually await him. Or who.

The strange woman was walking downstairs, huge patchwork bag slung over one shoulder. She wore an enormous red felt floppy-brimmed hat, threadbare blue jeans, half a dozen wooden bangle bracelets on each arm, absolutely no makeup, a crocheted woolly cardigan that fell past her hips, and a hand-lettered T-shirt that read FUCK THE SYSTEM.

“You know,” she said by way of greeting, “it’s possible to look at a woman’s face instead of her tits.”

“I – your shirt – ” Who the hell was this? “Excuse me, but what are you doing here?”

“Erik!” Charles emerged from the living room, leaning slightly on his blackthorn stick; he must be having a rough day, to be relying on it even at home. “I see you’ve met Dr. Moira McTaggart of the Greenwich Village Womyn’s Health Collective. Moira, this is Erik.”

“Doctor?” Erik was caught up short.

Moira folded her arms. “Women can be doctors, too.”

“I just – your shirt – “ he said again, helplessly.

But she was smiling. “Charles told me about you guys, and I just want to say, _Right on_. You know, I respect the Redstockings, but I’m not one of them. You guys aren’t rejecting the feminine; you’re rejecting the cultural privilege of the masculine, your assigned place in the hierarchy, and personally, I think that takes guts. Really, what you guys are doing here? Coparenting, inhabiting both the male and female socio-sexual spheres? That is the biggest middle finger to the patriarchy I can imagine.”

“Yes, well, we thought so.” Erik tried to give Charles a sidelong look, equal parts _who is this radical you’ve brought into our home?_ and _Now you’re telling our secrets to people you’ve only known for a day?_ But Charles was neither reading his thoughts nor meeting his eyes; his admiring grin was focused on Moira. Apparently they’d hit it off.

Charles did at least explain, “Moira here is all in favor of keeping things from the FBI.”

“I was CIA for a while. Can you believe it? When I woke up to the shit that was really going on – well, I woke up. Walking a different road these days. And all your secrets are safe with me.” Moira sighed and readjusted her patchwork purse, which Erik realized was actually her doctor’s bag. “The good news is, Raven’s in great shape with her pregnancy. That baby has a good strong heartbeat and kicks like a pony. Big, too. She might deliver a little early, but of course you never know.”

“You said, the good news. What’s the bad news?” Charles asked.

“Mentally, Raven’s really unsure right now. Which, I mean, no shit, the FBI is after her, and how are you supposed to live as a fugitive even without a baby to take care of? But what’s getting to her the worst is that she doesn’t know what she wants to do with the kid.” Suddenly Moira sounded less slangy, and Erik finally believed she was a physician. “I have contacts with a couple of reputable adoption agencies, if she decides on that route. But what Raven really needs is some quiet time. Some space to consider what she’s going to do with her baby, away from any other pressures – at least, as much as possible. You two need to give her that.”

“We’ll try,” Erik promised. Moira smiled at him again, and he decided that counted as calling truce.

Charles saw her out then – which included chatting with her for ten minutes at the door – and by the time he made his way back into the living room, Erik was equal parts exasperated and amused. “Where on earth did you find her?”

“A girl from Thailand that I worked with in Immigrant Outreach – she needed a doctor and was scared to talk to her father about it. The mother was dead. So I looked up Moira’s group. They were a bit wary of a grown Western man bringing in an Asian teenager – as well they should be – but once Moira understood the situation, we got on well.” Charles was beaming, the way he did when he’d discovered a fact, or a view, or a person capable of enthralling him; had Erik not been entirely sure of Charles’ lack of attraction to women, he might have been jealous. “I always kept her in mind to call on again if someone had need, though I little guessed it would be Raven. And now we’ll have her out to the house regularly, so you can really get to know her.”

“Have you adopted her already?”

“Moira’s _marvelous_ ,” Charles said, using his stick for balance as he lowered himself onto the couch next to Erik. “You’ll see. The most brilliant mind, and far more generous than she lets on with that prickly temper of hers. Contrarian – but I’ve known some other wonderful contrarians in my day.”

Erik had a feeling this referred to him. He found it a bit more annoying than amusing – but the mere fact that Charles obviously didn’t know that, was making an effort to _stay out of his head_ , outweighed anything else.  So he smiled. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about the – current situation.”

“As have I. Maybe you’ve come up with some better solutions than I have.”

“Solutions? No. But I have an idea.” Erik took a deep breath. “I should leave for a while.”

“Leave?” Charles’ face went so pale, so quickly.

Erik’s hand wrapped around Charles’. “I misspoke. I only meant – I should take a trip. Take Jean somewhere, maybe. Just for a week.” As Charles relaxed, Erik continued, “You and Raven should have some time together, as brother and sister, without me in the way.  I think if you had a chance to settle things more between you before I’m around much, it might go more smoothly.”

“You might be right.” But Charles’ blue eyes sought his, searching for the knowledge he was denying himself by refusing to read Erik’s mind. “And – you’d have some privacy.”

“I have privacy now. I can tell you’re giving me that.”

“I’m trying. It’s harder than I expected.”

Now Charles actually had to work to stay out of his head? Erik hardly knew what to make of that. “It gives you a chance to practice, then. And me a chance to think. Besides, I’ve been working such long days lately. I’ve hardly seen Jean for more than an hour at a time since the holidays.  It would be good for us, too.”

Charles nodded, but he was not yet fully at ease. Obviously his mind had gone straight to the one great rift in their relationship, their disagreement about adopting Jean, when Erik had gone so far as to look at apartments for rent. Erik tended to think of that time as birthing pains of a sort – the turmoil that had brought him from his grief for Anya to the happiness of raising Jean. But the scars ran deeper for Charles, and until now, Erik had not suspected just how deep.

He lifted Charles’ hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles. “I’m sorry I said it so badly. You know I’d never mean to – hurt you, scare you.”

“Of course. It’s just – “ Charles laughed softly, at himself. “Now that I’ve become so used to knowing your thoughts, when I don’t know them, it’s as if I don’t understand anything. Obviously I’m leaning on my abilities too much. Relying on them instead of what I know of you.” Their eyes met. “That’s always what I want to rely on first.”

Erik would have leaned in for a kiss, then, but Jean chose that moment to make her appearance. She had a naked Barbie doll clutched in each hand. “People are thinking about me going on a trip,” she announced.

The new privacy ideal was going to take some work with the younger mind-reader of the family. Erik said only, “How would you like to go to Disneyland?”

At first there were no words, only squealing so high-pitched that both Charles and Erik winced as they started to laugh. Then Jean took to jumping up and down, waggling the Barbies over her head like pompoms as she sang, “Yay yay yay yay yay yay yay!”

“This is bribery!” Charles said over the din.

“Guilty as charged!”

 

**

 

So, within the week, Erik found himself on a flight to Los Angeles. Either through the travel agent’s genius or sheer good luck, they were traveling in a first-class cabin in which they were the only two passengers. Erik had thought it would be a godsend when traveling with a no doubt tired and cranky child –

\--instead, Jean remained wide awake, excited to the point of hyperactivity, and determined to charm every single crew member on board.

“Can I have a ginger ale?” she piped as she kicked her little legs off the edge of her seat.

“I’d be happy to get it,” the purser said, grinning down at her, but Erik shook his head.

“Aren’t we about to land?” About fifteen minutes, they’d said; his ears had already popped several times. “It can wait.”

“But I’m _thirsty_.” Jean stuck out her lower lip. The purser gave Erik a look that suggested he was clearly a child abuser.

Erik just cuddled her closer to him. “Wait and we’ll get you something nice at the hotel.”

“Ice cream?”

It went against Erik’s grain to spoil the girl – he was the disciplinarian of the family – but this was a vacation, something special, and he decided he might as well go all out. “Strawberry for you. Chocolate for me.”

“Okay!”

The purser, now smiling again, went on his way to the coach section of the plane, which was only about one-third full, but no doubt contained far more people in genuine need, as opposed to little girls determined to find out just how good they had it.

Jean chose this moment to ask, “How did Aunt Raven get a baby in her tummy?”

“Ah. Hmm.” He believed in being honest with children, but how was he supposed to put this?  Charles would be so much better at handling that question. Of course Jean had become curious just when Charles was a continent’s length away.  Just his luck.

Too late he realized he must have envisioned some of what he was trying not to say, because Jean’s eyes became huge. “ _Ohhhh_.”

“Jean, why don’t we talk about this after – ”

Impact sent them both jerking forward so hard that Erik’s head whacked against the seat in front of him. Momentarily stunned, he thought _air pocket_ –

\--but then Jean screamed, and the plane began to rip apart.

Erik stared in horror as seawater rushed in around his feet. They’d gone down in the ocean, down without one moment’s warning. Screaming rose to a pitch all around him – Jean, other passengers, the tearing of metal –

 _Move!_ He slung off their seatbelts and snatched Jean into his arms. Already the stewardesses had begun shouting to evacuate, but even as Erik stood, the water deepened – ankles, calves, knees – and as the emergency lights blinked off and on, darkness to shadows, he saw the back part of the plane fall away, jagged steel pointing upward for one instant before it sank.

Jean’s shrieking rose to a pitch he’d never heard from her before; she knew they might die. The floor of the airplane had been ripped open too; water was gushing up, bubbling their battered luggage from the compartment below up with it. Within seconds the rest of the fuselage would sink, and there was no getting through the tides and debris to the exit by then, no chance.

Erik did not consciously choose to pray; he had not believed in God in many years. But it was a father’s instinct, the swift desperate distillation of everything he’d ever felt or been into the only thought that mattered: _Please, please, let me save my child._

In his frenzy, he imagined reaching out, somehow holding the entire massive bulk of the plane, holding it aloft in the waters through sheer force of will –

\--and then he did.

The plane’s fuselage rose in the water, only a few feet, but that was enough for the water to subside back to ankle-level. Once again Erik could walk, Jean in his arms, toward the exits, where the stewardesses were now again able to do their jobs. Through the crowd of panicking people – some of them battered and bleeding – he stumbled over twisted metal and sodden suitcases toward the frantic activity of the deploying rafts.

 _I can’t be doing this. I am. I’m doing this._ Erik could _feel_ the plane, every inch of its metal frame singing to him – singing, such an odd word, and yet it was the right one, and he felt as if he’d known the song his whole life without ever hearing it before. He could hold the airplane here on the surface of the waves as easily as he could hold Jean in his arms.

“Come on!” the steward shouted, half-shoving the passengers out into the rafts. When their turn came, Erik allowed them to be toppled into the wet yellow rubber, which bounced and bucked and splashed. Jean’s screaming never ceased.

“Shhh, sweetheart,” Erik said. “It’s all right. We’re safe.” Rain spattered down, plastering his hair to his forehead and scalp. Dully he saw a line of blood welling through the cuff of his pants; somewhere he’d cut his ankle. That hardly mattered, but he ran his hands over Jean to make sure she wasn’t injured too.

The flight crew piled into the raft after them, and then the last cabin attendants. “What happened?” one of the stewardesses asked, but the pilot looked too shell-shocked to answer.

Erik was in a state of wonder that didn’t allow for blame. Still he could feel the plane – or could he? Didn’t that have to be an illusion?

Everyone was now in one of the rafts, so Erik decided to try letting the plane go.

The song stopped. The fuselage sank quickly, silently, into the waves. They were alone on a dark, rainy ocean, the lights of Los Angeles on the distant horizon.

It was real. All of it was real.

Jean sobbed, “They’re all gone.”

“Shhhh. Everybody got off the plane, Jean. We’re okay.”

“Not in the back. In the back it was dark and then the water was all over them and they couldn’t breathe.” She gasped, her crying racking her so hard it must have hurt her. “They couldn’t, and they wanted out, Uncle Erik, they wanted out so bad and they couldn’t get out and it was scary, it was so scary, but now they’re gone – ”

The passengers in the back of the plane – Erik hadn’t even thought of that, so single-minded had his focus been. New horror swept over him as he realized that, because of her ability to sense the thoughts of others, Jean had experienced all those people’s deaths.

He pulled her even closer into his arms and made wordless shushing noises, stroking her hair and kissing her forehead, for the near-hour it took for rescue to arrive. But Jean remained hysterical until the Coast Guard physician gave her a small dose of a sedative; her eyes looked up into Erik’s hopelessly for the instant it took her to pass out.

Only then, as he balanced on a metal bench in the rescue boat, his ankle bandaged and Jean resting in his arms, did Erik have a moment to consider what had happened after the crash –

\--no, not what had happened. What he had done.

He’d prayed to be able to save Jean, and he had, by doing something so completely beyond the bounds of scientific law that it had to be considered … miraculous.

Erik had prayed to God, and through him God had worked a miracle.

Which meant that God existed.

Out loud, Erik said, “Oh, shit.” 


	2. Chapter 2

A police officer drove them to the hotel around 10 p.m. Jean remained insensate, but Erik got her out of her wet clothes, tucked her into her bed and hung both her things and his in the bathroom to dry. Their luggage had gone down with the plane. Once he’d swaddled himself in the hotel robe, he finally had his first chance to pick up a telephone.

Despite the late hour on the East Coast, Charles picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

“Charles – ”

“Oh, thank _God_.” Charles’ voice broke. “Jean?”

“She’s fine, we’re both fine, it’s okay. Jean’s right here by me, sleeping.” His head ached terribly. “How did you know what happened?”

“The crash made the 11 o’clock news here, just at the end. Raven and I were watching, and we nearly – never mind that. They didn’t know how many people had been killed, and we prayed and prayed. It’s so good to hear your voice, Erik. I love you.”

“I love you too.” If he’d even guessed that Charles might already have learned about the crash, he would have insisted on placing a phone call from the damned Coast Guard vessel. For almost three hours, Charles must have been in the most terrible fear, and Raven would’ve felt little better. Erik could have kicked himself.

“And Jean’s asleep?” Charles was laughing through tears by now. “Already?”

“They had to sedate her. Charles – her ability – during the crash, she felt some of the people who were trapped.” Erik leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and spoke even more quietly. “She felt them die.”

A long silence followed, and then Charles said, “I can’t even imagine how horrible –oh, Jean. I’ll come to you both tomorrow, as soon as I can get a ticket.”

“No. Stay with Raven. We’ll get back as fast as we can. Tomorrow I’ll see if Jean’s willing to try flying again.”

“Even if she is, are you?”

“We’ll manage. We need to be home. I need to be with you.”

“Okay,” Charles said. “All right. I love you. I said that, didn’t I? But let’s say it again.”

“Love you too.”

Erik hung up without saying one word about the miracle. He’d tell Charles everything – but first he had to grapple with it. He had to tell himself the truth before he could tell anyone else.

All that night, he lay in his own bed, only fitfully sleeping for a few minutes at a stretch. Sometimes he simply watched Jean sleep; the gratitude he felt for the mere sound of her breath had the power to bring tears to his eyes.

But most of the time he tried to wrap his mind around the fact that God was real.

How could that be possible? How could God have let his parents, and six million others, be sacrificed to the Nazis’ hate?

And yet he remembered something Charles had told him years ago on a park bench, about a God who might know and love and understand everything. Charles’ words had moved him tremendously, though he hadn’t believed them. Was it so impossible to believe?

 _Yes,_ Erik thought. It had to be. Because why would God give him the power to save Jean and not the power to save his parents?

But he _had_ saved Jean. He had saved her by doing something no human being could possibly do on his own. He had prayed for the ability to keep her alive, and that ability had been given to him in the most unexpected, unearthly form imaginable.

If that wasn’t a miracle, what was? Erik turned it over and over but could come up with no alternate explanation. Slowly, reluctantly, he began attempting to think of reasons a miracle might come to him, of all people – a resolute unbeliever whose prayer could have been but little different from anyone else on that airplane.

Maybe – maybe God had remembered Anya.

_How often I’ve wished to have been with her in the fire, to have had at least one chance to save her life, or die with her._

_This time I was given the chance._

This time, of course, that chance had also saved dozens of other people – a fact Erik had not even considered until they were disembarking from the Coast Guard boat. Only then had he seen their rain-streaked, bruised and scratched faces, all of them surfacing from the well of their terror, all of them relaxing into life again as they stepped onto solid ground. Had the miracle not occurred, they would all have drowned with him and Jean.

Was their survival, too, some small tribute to Anya – proof her death hadn’t been in vain?

It would be good to think so.

Her little smile, toothless and crooked, flickered in his mind more vividly than it had in a long while.

He felt as though he ought to be afraid, and the thought of an all-powerful, all-seeing God was certainly a terrifying one … but the reality was somehow not as bad as the mere idea. The reality was overwhelming mostly because it was so profoundly humbling – like the beautiful smallness he’d felt when looking up at a night sky filled with infinite stars, but greater and deeper than that.

Erik cried more that night than he had since the night a year and a half before when he’d visited Charles in the hospital, convinced he would not survive. Sometimes the source of the tears felt like joy, sometimes guilt, sometimes like loss, but mostly he thought it was the utter confusion of finding himself in a world that had turned upside down.

 

**

 

The next morning, he said very gently to Jean, “I don’t feel like going to Disneyland any longer, do you?”

She shook her head no. “I want to go home.”

“We’ll go home,” Erik promised, “right away. But – the fastest way for us to go home – we’d need to get on another plane. Are you ready to do that, Jean?” He didn’t relish the idea of a multi-day journey home by train, not least because it would delay the moment he’d again be with Charles, but he had to think of her first.

Jean simply nodded. “Yeah.”

“… are you positive?”

“Uh-huh. If there was a crash again, you could get God to help you hold the plane up this time too, so we’d be okay.” Her green eyes filled with fresh tears. “But now we would save everybody. Even the people in the back.”

“Everybody,” Erik promised, but how could he promise such a thing?

And yet – he could. He really could.

 

**

 

Their homecoming late that night was a jumble of hugs and tears and smiles. Mostly Erik remembered a moment with the door still open at his back, night wind blowing past, as Charles clutched the sobbing Jean in his arms and Erik embraced them both, putting himself between them and the cold.

Raven stood a couple feet away, arms folded over her chest and resting on her huge belly. Erik hesitated only a second before holding his hand out to her as well. She joined the hug, but gingerly, her fingers touching only Charles and Jean.  And she was the first to let go.

Charles could no longer carry Jean for very long, so Erik took her for the walk up to bed.

“Why did all those people have to die?” Jean whispered against Erik’s shoulder as they rode in the elevator. It was Charles she was asking.

“I don’t know, Jean.” Charles brushed a lock of her hair back from her forehead. “I don’t think there’s always a reason. But I know it was sad and scary, for them and for you.”

“But why?” Her voice quavered, and Erik wondered what she’d seen when she looked into the very moment of death. That was a horror even he, in his difficult life, had never known.

Once they reached her room, Charles took over – helping her into her nightgown, talking to her gently. For a brief while, Erik lingered there, not assisting, not even speaking, but just looking at the lacy curtains, the dollhouse he’d built for her birthday, all the toys strewn around the bed and the carpet. This was a child’s space, an innocent space. She ought to have been allowed that innocence for far longer.

Raven was in the hallway when he walked out. They regarded each other in silence for a long few seconds before she said, “That must have been fucking scary.”

He laughed despite himself. “Yes. It was.”

Her smile wavered. “It was for us, too.”

“I’m glad you were here for him.” Erik couldn’t imagine how much worse it would have been, had Charles been forced to wait alone.  

“Me too. And I was even – I was glad to be scared, you know? Because at least it meant I knew what was going on with you guys. It was so much worse to think about that happening and me not even knowing.”

“We’ve missed you too.” Erik dared to touch her shoulder, just for a moment. She only nodded. Finally he knew that her love for him – at least, her romantic longing – had died out, or was such a small ember that it would never blaze again.

After that he took a hot shower; though he’d done this in the hotel, too, it seemed as if the oily film of jet fuel was difficult to scrub entirely away – or maybe he was only imagining that it clung to him. At any rate, as he stood there in clouds of steam, the odor finally dissolved into more familiar smells of soap and shampoo. Erik hadn’t realized it was possible to feel so overwhelmingly thankful for something as simple as this …

Should he give thanks, then?

Feeling awkward, he closed his eyes and prayed, _Thank you._

Would that do? He couldn’t quite see himself asking Charles to teach him “Hail Mary.”  Praying felt incredibly strange, even though he now had to admit someone must be up there to hear it, and even perhaps to answer.

When he opened the bathroom door, naked and damp, Charles was in the bedroom waiting for him. Before Erik could even speak, Charles was in his arms.

They kissed, mouths open. Charles drew Erik’s tongue between his lips, and Erik felt his heartbeat quicken. When they broke apart, Charles pulled him even closer, and his fingers wound through Erik’s wet hair.

“All I could think,” Charles whispered against his throat, “the whole time, all I thought was, Erik left because he needed space from me, I hadn’t thought to give him that, and he ran away and now – ”

“Charles, no. Shhh. It’s all right.” Erik put his hands on either side of Charles’ face and kissed his forehead. “I wasn’t running away from you. And we’re here. We’re safe.”

Charles pressed soft kisses all along Erik’s collarbone, along the curve of his shoulder. His hands clutched Erik just at the splay of his hips. Already Erik could feel Charles’ erection hard through his trousers – wanting bound up with fear. How Erik remembered that from Charles war duty, the sharpness and desperation of it. Despite his exhaustion, his body began to respond in kind.

His fingers found Charles’ sweater, and he pulled it up and over Charles’ head. Even as he tossed it aside, Charles’ hands were at his own belt, fumbling with the buckle in his eagerness.

They had to be careful now – making sure that Charles wouldn’t lose balance as they shucked his trousers, easing onto the bed instead of crashing down onto it. But that caution only heightened the anticipation, Erik thought. With Charles naked against him, he felt newly, sharply aware of how good it was to be alive.

How long had it been since he’d reveled in the mere feel of Charles’ body? Taken the time to suck at each nipple until Charles groaned, to roll Charles’ balls in his palm and enjoy the tightening arousal he felt there? Too long. Far too long.

“It’s been a while – “ Charles panted, “—such a long while – since I wasn’t listening to you the – the whole time – _mmm_.  It’s a little like – wearing a blindfold.”

This was more arousing for Charles now that he wasn’t in Erik’s head? So much the better. He licked the side of Charles’ face, hot and sloppy, before whispering, “Reach over.”

Charles managed to palm the Vaseline. Erik greased his fingers, used his thigh to nudge Charles’ legs open – though Charles more than cooperated, drawing his knees up as far as he could manage. When Erik pushed his fingers inside, Charles whimpered, a sound that might as well have been hot wax melting down Erik’s spine.

“There. There. You like that.”

“ … yes … ”

“Tell me.”

“I love it.”

“More?”

“More. Please, more.”

Erik added another finger, went deeper, opened Charles further. He crooked his reach, searching for the spot where – and there it was, right there. Charles cried out hoarsely, then bit down on his lower lip. “Don’t bite down,” Erik murmured, pumping faster. “Let it happen.”

Charles quit biting. His flushed lips were wet and open as he gave into it completely. He was close now, so close –

At the very last, Erik pulled his hand back and rolled him over. Instantly Charles responded, going belly-flat, splaying his legs as wide as he could, and grasping the corners of the bed so that he was nearly spread-eagled upon it.  Erik covered him, angled his painfully hard cock so that Charles would feel it against his ass; his reward was Charles’ shudder.

Charles was so open, so slick, that sliding inside was effortless, painless, perfect. As Charles cried out, Erik kissed the space between his shoulder blades, then thrust in deeper, deeper again, all the way. He surrendered to the blindness of it, the heat and pressure that blotted out everything else.

His abdomen rippled against Charles’ back as he moved. Erik nuzzled Charles’ ear, lay his head against Charles’ so that they were cheek to cheek. His hands’ covered Charles so that they were both hanging on together, and he could cover Charles from fingertips to heart to thighs to toes.

“I love you,” Charles whispered, voice shaking. “Erik – I – ”

Then he bucked hard against the mattress, clenching even harder around Erik, and Erik knew Charles had come, just from that. The thought of Charles’ pleasure kicked into his own, and he tightened, swelled, pushed harder. Screwed his eyes shut. Bucked his hips into Charles again, again, and came.

His entire body shuddered in the aftermath. Erik’s whole weight rested on Charles for a moment as the world reeled around them. Then he recovered himself enough to shunt over, to pull out and let Charles breathe, and to whisper, “Love you too.”

Charles sighed, a soft happy sound, and the last of the tension and fear drained from him. They were molded together, content and inseparable.

For a long time, Erik simply lay there, breathing in the familiar scent of Charles’ skin, breathing it out again. He relished the simple feeling of Charles’ heartbeat against his chest, the curve of his ass against Erik’s groin. His lips brushed against the crown of Charles’ head, and he sought Charles’ hand with his own.

This, too, he had been given back when he’d lifted the plane from the water.

It was time.

“Charles?”

“Mmmm?” Already Charles sounded drowsy.

“I performed a miracle.”

“I’ll say.”

“No.” Erik pushed away, patting Charles on the shoulder to get him to pay attention. “Really.”

Charles propped himself up on an elbow. “What?”

“I performed a miracle. Or God did. God did, of course, but he did so through me. When the plane crashed, it should have sunk – all of it, not just the tail section. It was sinking. The water was almost to my waist. But I prayed to God to let me save Jean, and then I was able to lift the plane. Several feet. Enough for us to get out. When we were in the raft, I let go, and the plane sank.” Erik realized he was speaking so fast that he’d nearly run out of breath.

After a few moments, Charles just repeated, “ _What_?”

“I lifted the plane, Charles. Not with my hands, not like that, it was just – I wanted to lift it, and suddenly I could feel the metal with, with, some sense I didn’t even know I had, and I lifted it. That’s the only reason Jean and I are still alive. Or anyone else on the plane, for that matter. Do you need to read my mind to see it? To know I’m telling the truth? If so, then go ahead.”

“I don’t have to,” Charles said quietly. His eyes were searching Erik’s face. “I believe you.”

There was so much to say, and yet it was all so impossible to say. “It’s just – well, obviously, I believe in God now – believe isn’t the right word, I don’t _believe_ , I know, the same way I know your walking stick is in the corner, because I can see it, it’s real, it’s right there. God’s right there, and he’s been there all the while, but I don’t know how that makes any sense. It’s as incomprehensible to me as it’s always been, believing in God, and yet now I know he’s real, and so I don’t know what to do.” Charles would know, though. At least he had Charles to make him understand.

But Charles looked nearly as confused as Erik felt.

Erik said, “I thought you’d be happy about this.”

“I want to be. The number of times I’ve prayed for it – but this – a _miracle_ – ”

“I don’t see why he gave that to me instead of to you. You’re the one who – but then, your gift, your ability, that’s a miracle too, isn’t it?” Erik had never seen it that way, but his belief in it had crept up slowly, over the course of a few years. By the time Charles’ ability had become apparent to him – by the time it had become so all-encompassing, and brought in Jean as well – Erik was past the point of asking himself how it could even be possible.

But how? That, too, could only be God. Miracles were everywhere. God was everywhere. He felt surrounded.

“This is supposed to be comforting,” Erik said, flopping back onto the bed. “You’ve always said you took great comfort in belief. To me it feels – like this stranger has been arranging our lives without our knowing. Watching everything.” Watching his parents die. Watching Anya die.

If they were in heaven, did that somehow make it all right? How could anything make Magda’s lidless eye in her burnt body all right?

For a long time Charles did not reply. Finally he said, “You know. But you don’t believe.”

“If I know, it’s not necessary to believe.”

Charles shook his head. “I’m not as sure about that.” He laid his hand on Erik’s chest, just above the heart. “Erik – I want you to believe, to love God as He loves you. It makes me happier than you can imagine to think that you might. But I don’t want you to make that leap for the wrong reasons.”

“Are there wrong reasons?”  To judge by the variety and hostility of religious factions the world over, Erik had always figured an actual God could not have been very picky on that score.

“Yes. Fear is probably the worst.”

“I am afraid,” Erik confessed, “but that’s not why I know God did this. I know because – I _know_. Are you turning into a skeptic because I turned into a believer? Do we have to have one of each?”

It was a joke, but Charles didn’t laugh. “I’m taking care of your soul the only way I know how. If I suddenly announced I didn’t believe in God, you wouldn’t let me leave it at that, would you?”

“… no. I wouldn’t.”

“So let’s take this step by step. I’m with you, no matter what. All right?”

Erik covered Charles’ hand with his, then brought it to his lips to kiss the palm.  “All right. But still – I asked God to help me lift the plane. I did. It can only have been God who helped me. What other possibility is there?”

Charles laid his head on Erik’s shoulder, and they were quiet in the dark together for a long time, contemplating the impossible.  

 

**

 

The next morning, Jean was even worse.

She sobbed brokenly almost the whole day, more than she’d cried even when she was a baby. 

“They were so scared,” she whispered into Erik’s shoulder. “They were scared and scared and then they just _stopped_.”

At one point, when they managed to put her down for a nap, Charles leaned his head into his hand. “This is my fault,” he whispered.

“Charles, you didn’t wreck the plane.”

“But I helped her practice, encouraged her. Made her stronger – perhaps too strong.” He sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping. The afternoon light filtered through Jean’s lace curtains, casting delicate shadows against Charles’ pale skin. “I kept thinking of how much farther I might have come in understanding and using my gift if I’d had that kind of practice at that age. Yet I never really considered the ramifications. You tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen.”

Erik wanted to comfort Charles, but was acutely aware that everything Charles had just said was true. Yet he could see the other side of it as well. “She has this ability. So she would have had to face this eventually.”

“At age five?”

“Younger children have had to face harsher truths than these. At least you’re here with her. You always know how to help her understand.”

Although Charles nodded, he clearly remained unconvinced. He said only, “I’ll stay here while she sleeps. Make sure to ward off any unpleasant dreams.”

“You mean, you can protect her from nightmares?”

“Probably. I should be able to steer them in a different direction, at least. Remind her of something she likes, and then she’ll probably dream about that instead. I was thinking of Sleeping Beauty, maybe. She especially loves the ending, where they’re dancing in the clouds and the dress changes colors.”

A father’s love standing between his daughter and her bad dreams: It was the most beautiful thing Erik had ever heard. He leaned in to kiss Charles, surprising Charles enough to make him gasp. The kiss was long and deep, and when they broke apart, some of Charles’ gloom had lifted, just enough for him to smile.

As he headed downstairs, he thought more about that gasp. Still, Charles was keeping out of his mind. Erik found that he both liked and disliked this. He liked knowing that Charles would respect his privacy, liked having the freedom to grapple with the complications in his thoughts at the moment.

And yet he knew that what he considered privacy, Charles considered exile. 

In the kitchen, Erik found Raven sitting at the table looking churlish, and Moira in full swing. Today Moira’s T-shirt was plain blue, her skirt hardly long enough to cover her ass. Which was not a bad ass. Thank God Charles was exclusively homosexual, or Erik would have cause to worry. “I know they’re horse pills. Believe me. But they’re important vitamins, and you just have to deal.”

“Deal? With these things?” Raven retorted. She held up something so enormous that Erik required a second to realize it was something human beings were meant to swallow. “Have _you_ ever taken them?”

Moira fell silent, and Erik realized he could have chosen no worse time to walk in. “Excuse me. I’m sorry.”

“No. It’s okay.” Moira squared her shoulders. “You should stay. You guys have been open with me. Least I can do is return the favor.”

“Wait – you _have_ taken them?” Raven flushed. Her ever-changeable face looked more girlish than was decent on someone with a pregnant belly of such girth. “Pregnancy vitamins?”

“I have a young son,” Moira said quietly. “His name is Kevin. He’s – not well. He lives in a home, and I visit him twice a week.”

“Oh.” Raven’s hands closed over her belly, the first protective, maternal gesture Erik had seen from her.

“I took these, and everything went wrong anyway.” Moira looked down at the bottle, her eyes sad, as though she still wanted to have it out with the pills and figure out who was to blame. “Pregnancy’s a crapshoot, really. Women who do everything right can miscarry or have retarded children. Women who smoke and drink and live on hot dogs and Pepsi can give birth to healthy little angels. So if shit goes wrong, don’t beat yourself up about it. If your kid’s perfect, that’s not a merit badge from God, either. But still – might as well load the dice in your favor, right?”

“Right.” Raven took the pill bottle from Moira. Erik was beginning to glimpse what Charles saw in her.

Moira walked out, saying to Erik over her shoulder, “By the way, it’s also possible to be in the same room as a woman without looking at her ass.”

But she was laughing.

Once Moira had gone, her acid-green Volkswagen Beetle spinning down the long drive of the mansion, Erik made him and Raven both some tea. She’d always liked Earl Grey with milk. He preferred lemon.

Maybe it was the near-death experience getting to him, but Erik no longer saw the point of small talk. “Raven, who’s the father?”

Raven didn’t object, didn’t push back at all. He realized she’d been waiting for somebody to insist on knowing, as proof that they cared. “I never got his real name. I only knew him as Azazel.”

“What?”

“Azazel. See, within the group, we all had code names. Chosen names. They were supposed to represent our inner nature.” Raven’s smile was self-mocking. “I was Mystique.”

“Glamorous.”

“Which is exactly what counts, come the revolution.” She sipped her tea; they sat together at the kitchen table, so easily that it might have been the days before Charles went to war. “Listen to me, joking like it doesn’t matter any more. It does matter. But so much of it seems strange when you’re not in it. When I was with Azazel, though – none it was strange. It’s not like he was a pick-up, a one-night stand. We lived together for months. I … I didn’t love him yet, but I could have. You get me?”

Erik nodded.

“They got him on-camera during one of the first robberies. He had to go underground. So he doesn’t even know about this. If he knew – it’s not like we’d get married and lead some bourgeois suburban existence, but he’d care.”

“Do you want to try to find him?”

For a moment, such pure longing burned in her eyes that Erik was startled. But Raven said, “No. He has to stay hidden to protect himself. I have to stay hidden to protect myself. If we’re meant to find each other again, we will.”

Meant to find each other: it was the kind of talk Erik had always found sentimental to the point of ridicule. But a world that could contain God – no, in a world God contained, there was room even for fate. “And the baby?”

Raven remained silent for many seconds before replying. “I made an appointment, you know. For an abortion.” She held her teacup in both hands, her thumb brushing along the curve of the handle. “The whole time I was in the waiting room, I could only hear Charles’ voice calling me a murderess.”

“He’d never do that.”

“No. Really it was my own Catholic guilt talking. But that guilt usually talks in Charles’ voice.”

He had to laugh. “I can believe it.”

“Well, when they called my name, I stood up and walked right out of the clinic. Even a couple days later, I realized I’d been stupid. I was going to make another appointment and go through with it that time – but then the FBI turned up the heat, and we had to run, and I never got another chance until it was too late.”

Erik nodded and said nothing.

Raven looked down at the swell of her belly as though it were intruding on the conversation. “I wouldn’t want to raise a baby right now, even if I could do that with the FBI on my tail, which I can’t. And now that I’m bringing somebody else into the world, I have even more responsibility to help create a world worth living in. I can’t just stop. Just – change diapers and sing songs and pretend nothing’s wrong.”

Erik both wholly understood this concept and wholly rejected it. He remained silent.

“But giving the baby up – never seeing it again, never ever, not even knowing its name – the thought of it makes me sick. So I don’t know what would be the right thing to do. Maybe there is no right thing.”

The problem was one he couldn’t solve for her, and finally Erik thought he was old enough not to try. When the time came, if his input was wanted, he’d give it. For now he said only, “But you’re well. Feeling well.”

“More or less. Tying my shoes is getting kind of impossible. Not that I can see whether they’re tied or not.” Her cheeks flushed, but she grinned. “And – this is completely embarrassing – but oh, my God, I fart all the time.” Erik started laughing. “It’s true! Nobody ever tells you that! It’s all, oh, you’re expecting, you have that glow. Yeah, the glow of _farting_.”

“I’d forgotten!”

“Forgotten?”

“Magda,” he said. How they had laughed about it, when she was pregnant with Anya – one night, when it had been at its worst, he had fanned their blankets and sworn that one of hers would kill a little hen. He had no idea where that phrase had come from, or why it was funny, but they’d laughed so hard that they cried and Magda wet herself and swore at him and he had to rinse out her underclothes while she hugged him from behind. Anya had kicked his back through Magda’s belly.

“You’re smiling,” Raven said softly. “You usually don’t smile when you talk about her.”

“I should smile more. She liked to laugh.” There was more to think about there, but he’d consider it later.

 

**

 

At sunset Erik sat in the gardens, in what Charles considered his cathedral. To him it was still just plants.

The rustling of the grass made him glance over his shoulder to see Charles walking toward him. Warm orange light painted the sky, turning Charles half into shadow – the crooked line of his walking stick, the sharpness of his profile. In the early days, when Erik was not yet used to Charles’ injury, he had often gone to meet Charles halfway, or scolded him for walking too far; he knew better now. He smiled and shunted himself over to make room on the bench.

“How’s Jean?” he said.

“A little better at the moment. Raven’s baby is moving about, and Jean’s pressed against her like she’s trying to eavesdrop.” Charles smiled, but ruefully. “That’s only a distraction. I’ve tried to talk to her about life after death – to see if that will help – but she’s still very upset.”

“I’ve been thinking about heaven too. I never really considered it much before.”

Charles raised an eyebrow.

Erik shrugged. “The prospect should be comforting, shouldn’t it? Never really dying. Seeing my parents again. Watching you and Magda fight it out over me.”

That made Charles laugh despite himself. “Surely we would both be able to love you there.”

“You’d better hope so. She was tough.”  He gazed out across the grounds, the long unbroken line to the horizon. “But when I think about Anya, it all stops. What could heaven mean, for a baby? What survives of her that I would know or recognize? All an infant could possibly want is – more. More food, more sleep, more love. More _life_. Paradise could have meant nothing to her.”

Charles did not argue this, nor agree with it. Instead he put one hand over Erik’s. “Remember two years ago, when you fixed the garden gate?”

Though this struck Erik as a bizarre change of subject, he nodded.

“Cast-iron. Incredibly heavy. But you fit it back into the hinges.”

“Not that heavy.”

“Yes, it was. Or what about the way you can change a flat faster than an Indy pit crew?”

“It’s not that I’m so fast. It’s that everyone else is so slow.” The process was so easy that Erik had sometimes wondered whether tires were affixed to cars well enough for safety.

“You have a knack with all sorts of machines.”

Erik shrugged. They’d joked about it occasionally before. “Are you about to ask me to repair something?”

“No. I want you to consider what I’m about to say very carefully.” Charles took his time to consider it first, leaning his chin atop the hand that encircled the handle of his walking stick. His eyes were the blue of the darkening sky. “My gift wasn’t given to me in one moment of extreme need. It’s something I’ve always possessed, just as Jean has. Do you think your – ability with metal, let’s say – do you think that might be the same?”

It struck Erik as absurd. “I never felt it before.”

“Maybe that’s because you never exercised it that powerfully before. But I’ve grown far stronger since practicing with Jean; maybe you made a leap forward after the crash.”

This sounded vaguely more plausible, but still unlikely. Erik put out his hand and looked toward the wire trellis that arched between two hedges, where the morning glories bloomed in spring. “Let’s give it a test, then.”

He tried to imagine reaching toward the metal the same way he had with the plane – tried to recapture that strange song –

\--and then he did. It was different, as if in another key, or softer, but still, it was the same. The wire curve and net of the trellis sharpened in his mind, and instinctively he pulled upward.

Metal squeaked. The trellis jerked partly from the ground, then slowly leaned to the side.

Charles laughed out loud in wonder.  

“You saw it,” Erik said. Already his heart was pounding again. “You saw it this time.”

“I did! Erik – that’s brilliant!”

“It’s proof, isn’t it?”

“Yes. The question is what it proves.”

 

**

 

That night, Charles elected to sleep on the trundle bed in Jean’s room; her dreams remained greatly troubled, and he wanted to be near enough to respond immediately. Erik remained alone in their bed, curtains open so he could look up at the dark sky.

He could move metal. He could control it, shape it, wield it. Something as fragile as a slender wire or as enormous as an airplane – any of it, all of it, could become a tool for his personal use. A tool for what task?

As different shapes and forms of metal occurred to him, he tried to think of the possibilities, though there were so many that he found himself distracted. Or he did until he remembered one set of metal gates through which he had walked very long ago. That was the last walk he had taken with his parents, the one through the mud that led them into Auschwitz.

If he could but have twisted that metal – taken the Nazis’ guns –

Erik’s eyes widened, and the black sky was a backdrop for his dreams. Dreams of wresting the Nazis’ weapons away, killing them as savagely and swiftly as they had killed his parents. Wreaking vengeance on every Nazi, everywhere, their guns, their knives, their barbed wire all toys in his hands. And why just the Nazis? The people who had come to him over his decade at Immigrant Outreach had told him tales of horror from within Vietnam, China, the Soviet Bloc – what he could do to the barricades on the Berlin Wall! The power shivered within him, seductive and electric, and for a moment he was dazzled.

But those were the dreams of the child he’d been when he saw that gate at Auschwitz. As a boy, a teenager, even a very young man – if he’d discovered his gift from God then, his righteous fury would have blazed out in every direction. Erik was older now. He knew that helping people had less to do with playing the conquering hero and more to do with struggling through bureaucracy. That it was less about making statements and more about listening. That he could never tear down all the world’s evil, but that there was a chance to build something good to stand against it.

He sighed, turned over in bed and smiled into his pillow. Dreams were fun while they lasted.

 

**

 

Although Erik was technically on vacation, he decided to save the days off and return to Immigrant Outreach. When he walked in, his staff greeted him with hugs and tears of relief – and then many, many files requiring his immediate attention.

By the time he got home, he was weary, and thinking of little beyond making sure Jean was well, and perhaps asking Charles more about prayer and what purpose it could possibly serve. But as he drove up, he saw that there were other cars in the drive. Moira’s lime green Beetle – Armando’s taxi – even Father Jerome’s ancient Oldsmobile. There was a red Chevy Corvair Erik didn’t remember having seen before. Was Charles throwing some sort of a party? Could that possibly be a good idea with a fugitive in the house?

“Erik!” Charles’s stick thumped on the floor as he came to greet him in the hallway. “You’re late. We have company.”

“So I see. What’s going on?”

Everyone was milling around in the living room. Armando talked animatedly to Moira, Father Jerome cradled Jean in his lap, and Raven was speaking to a young man with horn-rimmed glasses who stared at her as though he’d never seen a beautiful woman before.

“Ah, Father Erik,” said Father Jerome. “There you are. Now perhaps we can get this mysterious meeting started, hmm?”

Charles grinned as he went to the center of the room. “Those of you who haven’t met him yet – this is Dr. Henry McCoy of Columbia University.”

The young man with glasses rose. He was old enough to be a doctor? To Erik he looked hardly out of his teens. No doubt this was a sign of advancing age.

“Hank here is a student of human genetics – most particularly, extraordinary human potential.” Charles glanced around at each of them in turn. “I reached out to him a last month because I was interested in seeing whether my ability to read minds, or Jean’s, might be reflected in our genetic makeup.”

Wait – Charles had been wondering whether his gift didn’t come from God? Erik had never suspected this, not for a moment. And yet he thought he could understand why Charles wouldn’t say such a thing out loud, even to him, until he was very ready.

Hank stood up, his youth and nervousness evident as he nodded. He looked very ordinary, Erik thought, save for the enormous feet. “Right. Not that identifying genes is exactly easy, but – that’s what I’m trying to develop ways to do.”

Charles continued, “Everyone here is someone who knows about my abilities, or Jean’s, or what Erik did after the plane crash.”

“What did Erik do after the plane crash?” Armando murmured. Raven waved her hand at him and mouthed the word _Later._

“As such,” Charles said, “I think we form the ideal test group for Hank.”

“If you’re willing,” Hank chimed in, “I would take a quick blood sample from all of you. Just a finger prick! No more than that. I’d like to see if there’s a marker that stands out with Charles, Jean and Erik that doesn’t exist for the rest of you.”

Moira folded her arms. “Why don’t you just do an ordinary study?”

“No university approval – yet.” Hank’s fair cheeks blushed. “This is of course highly preliminary, and if any of you object to taking part, I completely understand. But there’s no risk, no harm – well, save for the finger prick, and I know some people object to needles – ”

“I’m in,” Raven said. She shrugged. “It’s a needle. No big.”

“When you put it that way, sure.” Armando raised two fingers and nodded.

Father Jerome cuddled Jean and said, “What about it, Miss Jean? It will hurt, but only for a moment.”

She thought this over. “Do I get ice cream after?” Charles nodded and smiled at her.

“As Miss Jean goes, so go I,” Father Jerome said. “Though I, too, shall expect payment in ice cream.”

Although she continued to frown, Moira said, “I want to see this research for myself. Deal me in, and you can take as many blood samples as you want.”

“This was as much my idea as Hank’s.” Although Charles pitched his voice for the entire room to hear, his blue eyes sought only Erik. “I think it’s important to know – maybe now more than ever.”

Charles was willing to test his own gift. Willing to see whether it came from God or somewhere else entirely – willing to risk even his own profound connection to his faith – to give Erik the answers he needed.

Not for the first time, Erik wondered what he had done to earn a love like that.

“Yes,” Erik said. “Let’s find out.” 


	3. Chapter 3

The kitchen turned into a makeshift laboratory, with Hank’s materials spread out across the table and Moira next to him as self-appointed assistant.

“You won’t let it hurt?” Jean said within Erik’s arms, as she hesitantly held out her hand.

Hank took her hand – less like a doctor, more like a friend. Behind the thick glasses, his eyes were kind. “I would if I could, but I can’t. It has to hurt a little. But only a little, it’s fast. Do you want me to show you on my own finger first?”

Jean thought this over. “That’s okay.” She pointed her index finger bravely.

Erik privately thought Hank should have considered pediatrics instead of genetics. He glanced over at Charles for his reaction – none. Was it strange to miss having Charles reading his thoughts all the time?

After he and Charles took their turns, Armando went up next. “Compared to a bullet in the shin, this ought to be nothing.”

“I’m here just in case,” Charles said, and the war buddies shared a grin. 

Given their close friendship during the war, Erik hadn’t been surprised when Charles and Armando kept it up afterward. He had, however, been astonished when Charles came home from their first get-together – drinks in the city – and said he’d asked Armando over to eat with them that weekend. Erik had said, “You want me to clear out over the weekend? Are you ready to handle Jean on your own?” Charles’ recovery was still very new then; that outing was the first one he’d taken on his own.

“No. I told Armando about us,” Charles had said. “He’d like to meet you.”

Erik had frowned. “Told him what?”

“I told him we were like a married couple, really, except that you’re a man. Or except that I am. Whichever.”

“What?” They had only just admitted the truth about their relationship out loud to Father Jerome, who’d as good as known for six years prior. Was Charles going to start telling everyone he knew?

“I thought we could trust Armando,” Charles had said, very determined. “And if we couldn’t, then the friendship wasn’t going to be the same anyway. I thought I’d rather it foundered on the truth than on secrets, if it came to that. But Armando wasn’t put off.”

This had made no sense to Erik. He’d tried to come up with an explanation: “Is he a homosexual too?”

“No. In fact, he had rather a vivid crush on Raven just from her photo.” They’d been silent for one beat too long; she’d departed only a few weeks prior, and the pain had been fresh. “I can’t say he wasn’t startled – he very much was – but he said – ” To Erik’s surprise, Charles had smiled. “He said he’s been a New York cabbie for six years and by this point it takes more than that to count as ‘weird’ in his book.”

And now Armando was here in his kitchen, holding out his finger for Charles the army medic to bandage, part of a group that all knew the truth … well, possibly not Hank, but given Charles’ increasing tendency to tell people he liked, Erik would bet Hank knew too. Raven was scooping the promised ice cream for Jean and Father Jerome; Moira was animatedly talking with Hank about his work, science-speak that went right over Erik’s head but was nonetheless engaging to listen to. Everything was easy, even comfortable. Being with several friends for whom their relationship wasn’t a secret was more gratifying than Erik would ever have believed.

Maybe there really was a place for them in this world – hard fought, hand-carved, very small, but their own.

But by far the strangest aspect of the evening was the array of slim glass tubes in front of Hank. Odd enough to think of them containing pieces of every single person in this room, but to think that they perhaps held the answer to the oldest and deepest secret of the world – that it might prove or disprove the existence of God –

Erik shivered.

“By the way,” Moira said casually as they began to break up that evening, “I think I’m being followed.”

Erik’s eyes widened. “You didn’t think to mention this before?” Charles looked startled as well, which was surprising, but they’d get to that later.

Moira shrugged. Her eyes darted over to where Raven was talking to Hank; obviously she didn’t want Raven put under any further stresses. “Better to act normally, I thought. There’s no particular reason to suspect they’re following me because of you. I help … several people who work against the system.”

“But we need a reason for you to have been here,” Charles said. He put one hand on Moira’s shoulder. “Let’s talk about this outside, all right?”

“I’ll come too,” Erik said, but Moira shook her head.

“Charles is my contact. If I’ve been followed for more than a couple of days, then he’s the one they connect with me.  You should stay out of it as much as possible.”

“You really have done this before, haven’t you?” Erik had thought she was joking about the CIA before, but now he wasn’t as sure.

Moira’s mouth curled upward into a slow, satisfied, Cheshire-cat smile. “Hey, you didn’t look down from my face even once. Knew you could do it.”  

Damn the woman! And yet Erik was grinning as Charles ushered her to the front walk.

 

**

 

Everyone had left, Jean was tucked in and Erik had donned his pajama bottoms before Charles came back to their bedroom. “I think we’ve got it sorted,” he said, though he looked tired.

“You and Moira? What are you going to do?” Erik wondered if he’d have to smuggle Moira to the mansion. She didn’t seem likely to relish being put in the trunk of the car.

“We’re going to have a mad love affair.” When Erik stared, Charles attempted a smile even as he lowered himself gingerly onto the bed. “So far as anyone else in the world knows, I mean. Easy enough. I meet her for lunches when I go into the city; she stays here on weekends, in one of the spare bedrooms, which also means she can take closer care of Raven. I ought to take her into New Salem too – we’ve needed more cover since Raven moved out. My going about with a girlfriend for a few months should do it.”

“How long is this going to go on?” Erik felt irrationally – but undeniably – jealous.

“Until after Raven gives birth. After she moves on. How I hope that’s no time very soon, but – I don’t know. I’m staying out of Raven’s head, but she’s restless. I can tell.” Charles leaned against the headboard and slowly extended his bad leg. It must have been hurting him this evening; Erik sat by his side and began massaging the joint, to an appreciate grunt from Charles.

“And you and Moira will be – physically affectionate.” He tried to keep his tone casual. “In public, I mean.”

“Just enough to satisfy anyone who’s observing, be they town gossips or FBI agents.” With a cocked eyebrow, Charles asked, “Do you mind?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“Your face looks as if you just bit into a lemon, so I’m going to go out on a limb and say you mind.”

“You’re really not reading my thoughts any longer,” Erik said, which was the deftest change of subject he could mind. “How are you managing that?

“It takes a lot of work. I’m trying to set a good example for Jean – she and I had a long talk about privacy. But it makes my head hurt.” This wasn’t a metaphor, either; now that Erik looked more carefully at Charles, he could see how pale and tense he was. Even on his worst days, the knee alone didn’t pain him like that any longer.

“You need aspirin. And water. Do you want a wet washcloth for your head?”

“Aspirin would be lovely.”

Erik kissed him and went in search of painkiller. None was in the bathroom, so that meant they’d probably left the bottle downstairs. As he walked into the hallway, though, he heard the whirring of the elevator gears within the shaft.

Jean? No. She wasn’t above sneaking downstairs for a cookie, but when she did, she always took the stairs. Erik quickened his steps but didn’t make it before the side door’s lock clicked. Damn it.

He threw on a jacket and ran barefooted onto the grass. Even in the dark, he could see her shadow. “Hey!”

Raven whirled around, her one bag clutched to her side, poncho over her shoulders, shoes on. When they faced each other, she looked surprised only for a moment – then angry. “What?”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Away from here.”

“Why?”

“Do you think I’m deaf, Erik? Moira apparently does.”

Raven’s hearing had always been sharper than most people’s. Erik had forgotten that. She knew Moira was being followed.

He remained close to her as he said, “If they’re not just watching her – if they’re watching us – tearing out of here in the dead of night is the worst thing you could do. You’d get yourself caught within minutes. Charles and I could deny nothing. Do you understand?”

“I can’t lead them here,” she whispered, and for the first time ever he saw a crack in her fierce pride. “If they catch me, even if they take the baby, I could survive that. I’d find the baby – I’d get it back, somehow, I could eventually – but if I ruin everybody else’s lives too – it’s not worth it.”

“You aren’t going to ruin our lives. Not if you go back to bed.” At last Erik felt assured enough to add, “For us, the risk is worth it. You’re always worth it.”

Raven turned her head sharply away from him, and he pretended not to see her struggling against tears.

“Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s go back inside.”

Charles forgot his headache in the flurry of getting Raven settled and comfortable again. They unpacked her things for her – the few garments she owned – as though that would make her stay put this time. Raven sat on the edge of her bed, listless and lost, without even the wild energy that had driven her out in the dead of night.

Had she turned into someone who had to be fighting in order to feel alive? Erik had lived that way for years before he met Charles. That state of mind invigorated as powerfully as it imprisoned.

Finally Charles carefully lowered himself to sit beside her. “Raven, we have to talk about the baby.”

“We have talked about the baby.”

“But we’re no closer to any answers. You’re not going to feel settled until you know what you want.”

“I know what I want,” Raven said. “But it’s impossible.”

Azazel back, most likely. Some improbably virtuous hippie world in which they could all live together. Erik wondered about that young man out there in the world with no idea of what he’d done. The irresponsibility of it enraged Erik. Was wearing a rubber so damned hard?

Charles studied her face, obviously working hard not to employ his powers – even now, when they would have been so helpful. They really did have to talk about that. Finally he said, “Tell us what you want, and let’s see how close we can get.”

The words came out in a flood: “If it’s a girl I want to name her Mystique, after the person I wanted to be and never got to be.” _Poor baby_ , Erik thought, but he said nothing. “If it’s a boy I want to name him Kurt – no, not after that dickweed Kurt Marko, but because – because maybe it’s Azazel’s real name. I heard him mention it one time, and maybe I’m wrong, but if there’s any chance a little boy could have his father’s name, I’d want that for him.”

“Okay,” Erik said as she gulped in a breath. At least they were making a start. “That’s good.”

“And I want the baby, but I don’t want it now. I can’t give it up for adoption, but I can’t raise it yet. Not the way things are.” She took Charles’ hand, but it was Erik she looked at as she said, “I want you two to keep it for me.”

Erik and Charles turned to each other, instinctively. The first thought Erik had was that he would have to caution Charles about being too excited; the second was that Charles looked wary, and the overwhelming excitement Erik felt was his own.

He’d fought against Jean so hard – so hard he’d nearly lost Charles over it – and had never once entertained the idea of seeking another child for them to raise, improbable as such a chance might have been. But Erik realized that in the four years between then and now, he had changed. He no longer thought of Magda and Anya as people he had lost, but as people he had loved. Realizing that he could have a life with Charles, that he could raise Jean, had given him hope where before he’d had so little, and none for himself. Only now did he see how deeply he’d been transformed.

And yet finding out God existed had had so little to do with it. Shouldn’t that have been the biggest change of all?

Then Raven repeated, “I want you to keep the baby _for me_. When I’m ready – when I can raise a child, when the FBI isn’t breathing down my neck – I want my baby back.”

Raise a baby, love it as his own for years to come, then let go whenever she demanded? Rip a child from the only home it knew? Before Erik could stop himself, he said, “Have you thought about what that would do to us? To the child?”

“I’m being selfish. And unrealistic. I know that.” Again her eyes glittered. “But you guys asked to know what I want? Well, that’s what I want.”

“It’s a start,” Charles said. The warning glance he gave Erik prevented any further comment.

They got Raven to bed. They went to bed themselves. Only then, as they lay side by side in the dark, did Charles ask, “Could we take the baby?” He wasn’t asking permission. He was trying to figure out whether it was possible.

Erik asked what he thought was the real question. “Could we give it up?”

Neither of them had any answers, any more than Raven did herself.

 

 

**

 

Their world became one of watching and waiting.

Watching the roads, watching for low black cars that idled too close for too long. Erik felt the mansion was clear – for now. But on lunch hours or after work he sometimes walked down to Moira’s clinic in the Village, where blank men in dark suits stood out sharply from the colorful crowd, circling like – not like vultures, who only came for a specific kill, but like seagulls, idly greedy for any chance.

Watching Charles arrive to take Moira out, seeing him lean on Moira’s arm as gladly as he did on Erik’s. Her chestnut hair rippled in the breeze as she laughed at something Charles said that Erik couldn’t quite catch from his place down the street. The fact that he knew he had no reason to be threatened didn’t mean it was easy to watch them together; Erik wasn’t being cheated on, but he felt as if he were being shown some sort of diabolical sneak preview of what it would be like if it ever happened.

Which it wouldn’t. Charles would never. But the sight generally soured Erik’s mood for several minutes.

Waiting for Charles to come back, and whiling away the time by testing his newfound gift. Erik thought, at first, that he had the power to move metal, but as he practiced, he began to think that really he had the power to hear it, and to make it hear him. Only when that song reverberated through him, that strange and mysterious sense of _knowing_ metal almost as one might know a person, was he able to use the talent he’d been given. And Erik wondered what, or whom, he had known the night he lifted the plane.

Waiting to find out what Hank’s studies would show. If their genes were precisely like those of other people, did that exclude any scientific cause of their talents? Would Hank become the person who proved that God had to be real? Erik wondered if it would come to some sort of a test, some amphitheater of scientists and ministers, watching him and Charles work their wonders. The corner of his mouth lifted as he tried to imagine the Church begging Charles to come back, now that he could work miracles. But what would Erik become then? Some sort of preacher in his own right, proclaiming God through acts instead of words? He found the idea repugnant, and yet if he had such evidence, wasn’t it his duty to offer it to the world?

Watching Raven’s body change, then change again – he’d forgotten how dramatic the last few weeks were, how the baby’s growth became evident on an almost daily basis. Watching her eyes follow him, no longer with the romantic yearning he’d dreaded but with a hope even more terrible.

Or maybe – he thought, as he imagined again holding a newborn in his hands – the terrible hope was his own.

 

**

 

One Saturday morning Erik rose earlier than usual, for no particular reason, and went downstairs to start breakfast. There he found Jean pouring far too much milk into a bowl of Rice Krispies. “Hungry already?”

“I woke up.”

He brushed back her red curls. “Did you have a bad dream?” Jean had improved since the wreck – but only so far. She still carried a melancholy too heavy for her years.

“I don’t know. Maybe. When I used to wake up, I would feel your thoughts or Daddy’s thoughts. You’d be asleep so I’d sleep too.”

“Why didn’t you do that this time?”

“Now we have to have _privacy_.” She scowled with such determination that he had to smile.

“We do need privacy. But I tell you what. If you’re feeling lonely or scared, you can ask permission, and I’ll let you sense my thoughts. All right? And I’ll go ahead and give you permission to do that anytime you wake up from a bad dream.”

Her milky smile was the most enthusiasm he’d seen from her since before the crash. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. You know why we want you to be more careful now, don’t you?”

“So I won’t feel bad stuff like the crash.” Already her smile had faded. “I think my dream was about that.” 

He scooted her bowl across the table until it was in front of him, then picked her up and put her on his lap. “Are you always thinking about how they died?”

Jean’s voice was very small. “Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t. It’s a mistake, doing that. Leaving this world is scary. We don’t know what happens after.” Erik remained highly unsure about any idea of an afterlife, but he didn’t feel like a hypocrite saying this much to her; this much he believed. “Still, death is – it’s only one moment. One thing that happens. We have our whole lives before then, and our lives are what matter.”

She didn’t understand; she couldn’t possibly, because she was only just five.  And yet he felt he had to say this.

“You remember how I told you that I used to have a wife and a little daughter, right?”

Jean nodded. “My big sister.”

Erik had never said that to Jean before, had never even thought it. The idea made him wrap his arms around her. “She could have been.”

“They died when your house burned down.” The tremor in her voice told him she was thinking of that in the light of what she’d known in the aftermath of the wreck. Jean understood something about the last moments of Magda’s and Anya’s lives that Erik would not glimpse for himself until the very, very end.

“For years and years, I thought about how they died. Every time I thought about them, that’s what I thought. I only remembered how they died. None of that changed until I met your daddy, and you came to live with us. I remembered that my wife liked singing first thing in the morning. I remembered that my daughter laughed when she splashed the water in her bath. I almost lost those memories because I didn’t let them in. Because I thought their deaths were bigger than their lives.”

She stared up at him, blinking.

“I’m not making any sense, am I?”

“It makes sense,” Jean said, but in the tone of voice employed by children anxious not to be thought too little.

Erik leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Read my mind, then.” His emotions might make sense to her where nothing else did.

“It’s okay?”

“Right now, this time, it’s okay.”

Jean was quiet for a few seconds, then put her arms around Erik and hugged him. He didn’t know then, or ever after, whether she’d truly glimpsed what he was trying to say then – what he had only just learned for himself – but she rarely spoke about the crash after that, and before the end of the day he heard her laughing again.

 

**

 

One week later, Hank came to visit in the early hours of the evening. He had brought a lollipop for Jean, which went over well, sheaves of file folders with his scientific findings, and Moira.

“My dearest darling,” she said, smiling at Charles and Erik as she came in. “Together again at last. And hi, Charles.”

“You’re still in trouble,” Erik replied as he ushered her into the living room. “Trying to steal my man.” 

“See, I love how you appropriate the stereotypical feminine persona and give it a whole new reading. Kind of a camp twist on the catfight? But you and me, we’re beyond the whole Madonna/whore thing.” Moira’s smile was sly. “Particularly since I’m assuming neither of us is a good candidate for the Madonna.” 

Hank looked up expectantly for Raven, who hadn’t yet shown herself; she might be dozing, as she catnapped frequently to make up for the deeper sleep that now eluded her. “Let’s go ahead,” Charles said as he sat by Moira on the couch. “What did you find?”

“Not what I expected.”

He hadn’t found what he’d expected. Hank had expected a genetic component to their powers. If there wasn’t one, then their abilities weren’t natural – they were supernatural, and God really did exist. Erik felt his pulse quicken, and he could not have spoken.

But Hank continued, “I was looking for an abnormal marker from Charles, Erik and Jean. The rest of you were merely controls against the prototypical human gene, to make sure my methodology was correct.”

“All right,” Moira said. “Out with it.” As an aside, to Charles, she said, “He wouldn’t say a peep on the way out here. Drove me crazy.”

“Moira and Father Jerome matched the typical human gene. But I found a specific atypical marker in Charles, Erik, and Jean … and Armando, and Raven. And in myself, I should mention, but I was expecting that.”

“Armando and Raven?” Erik tried to figure out what this meant. Were the test results flawed in some way?

“Her face,” Charles said suddenly. “The way Raven can look one way and then another. It’s not just an illusion, is it? Just something we imagine. When she talks about being disguised – there’s something different about her. She has her own gift, one that hasn’t been tapped into yet.”

“And Armando?” Moira asked.

“He recovered from his gunshot wound far faster than he ought to have done.” Charles wore a far-away look.  “We thought he was lucky, but – he also told me about an incident when he was a child. He fell into the East River, and he didn’t drown. He couldn’t swim, but he didn’t drown …”

It hit Erik then: They each had gifts. No. Abilities. Because gifts came from a giver, and if what they could do was simply a matter of their genes – then it hadn’t been given to them by God. All his wondering about whether God had shown mercy because of Anya, whether his awkward prayers were worded correctly, all of that had been meaningless. He had a talent, an unusual one, but no more miraculous than curly hair or blue eyes.

Erik felt – both humiliated and vindicated at once. The world was as he had long thought it to be; his mind had reasoned correctly. And yet the possibility had briefly seemed so beautiful …

But Charles. What must he be thinking? His faith had to be shaken, at least. Perhaps shattered. His gift from God, the quality that had defined the direction of his life and the shape of his character – it had not come from God at all. Erik thought he could hardly imagine the devastation in Charles’ heart. Why had he let Moira sit between them? It would have helped Charles, surely, for them to at least take hands.

When they began talking more informally – Moira and Hank much taken with speculating about how to teach each different ability – Charles rose from the sofa under the pretext of wanting some water. Erik went quickly to his side.

“I’m all right, really,” Charles said.

“Are you sure?”

Charles nodded. “I wish Armando were here. His – adaptation seems to be the most flexible, the most changeable, at least if I’m guessing correctly. But it would be fascinating to test, wouldn’t it?”

“… that’s what you’re thinking about?”

“Of course. Think of what we’ve just learned.”

“Yes – ” Erik noticed that Charles’ steps were steadier than usual, that his leg was doing well at the moment… and that this was all he had been referring to when he reassured Erik he was all right. He really had only wanted a glass of water. “You’re not upset that – the explanation is scientific?”

Charles smiled, and the expression was wistful. “For you, that disproved God’s existence. I’d thought it would. For me, it didn’t.”

“How could it not? My miracle wasn’t – it’s just something I can do, Charles. A talent I have like any other.”

“And who said that doesn’t come from God? To me, the discovery of a genetic component … it’s like being privileged to see the hand of God at work.”

“The hand of God. In a gene.”

“It makes sense, I think. Why should I assume God would accomplish his purposes by ignoring the intricate rules of the universe He created in favor of … magic pixie dust?” Charles’ fingers tightened affectionately around Erik’s arm. “This is what I meant, when I said you knew but you didn’t believe.”

Had Erik truly believed in God, had he taken faith into his heart, he knew he would have been crushed by this revelation. Instead Erik realized he felt … relief. What peace he’d found in the weeks since the airplane crash hadn’t come from his uncertain belief, but in human understanding. The confusion and exposure he’d felt in the immediate aftermath, when he had thought himself under the dictates of some inscrutable, unfathomable deity – well, he wouldn’t miss it.

His anxiety had been for Charles’s faith, not his own, and that remained untouched.

“Besides,” Charles said, “Hank says this gene is fairly rare. Do you see how many of us have been brought together? Doesn’t that suggest to you that something beyond random chance?”

Just then Raven walked in, face pale. “Moira?” she said. Then her expression tightened – not pain but the attempt to hide it – and Erik remembered that well. It was exactly how Magda had behaved during the first few hours of labor. 

Instantly Moira hopped up. “Thank God I put my bag in the car.”

 

**

 

Despite his advanced degrees and deep scientific understanding of the human body, Hank wound up being assigned to babysit Jean. Charles had some medical training because of his time as a medic in Vietnam, and had even delivered one child there, so he assisted Moira. This left Erik free to hold Raven’s hand.

“Okay,” she said between contractions, her fast damp with sweat, “I’m in favor of natural childbirth, but I swear to God right now I’d fuck Nixon for some drugs.”

“Getting close.” Moira’s hands were bloody by now. Charles had his hands propped so that Raven could essentially use them as stirrups; his leg had to be killing him, but he’d never said a word except to encourage his sister. “Get that head out on the next push and we’re good as home.”

Raven let her head fall back on the pillow for a moment; her labor had been quick as such things went – five hours or so – but that was more than enough to exhaust anyone. Gently Erik brushed her hair back from her damp, flushed face. As he did, she smiled up at him, comforted and almost content.

It was a snapshot from a life they could have lived, had things been different. He knew it as well as she did, then, and he sensed that was all she’d ever really wanted, at the core of it – for Erik to acknowledge what might have been.

But her smile twisted into a grimace as the next contraction came upon her.  “Oh, God, oh God, oh oh oh – “

Then Raven screamed. Her fingernails dug into Erik’s hand so tightly he knew they broke the skin, but he hung on. Charles’ eyes went wide as Moira began to work. He said, “You’re there, Raven, you’re right there – the head’s out – “

“That’s it, here we go, push!“ Moira said, as Raven screamed again, and then there he was, a tiny wriggling bloody thing that squalled even before he could be spanked.

 _Just like Anya_ , Erik thought, and it was the first time since her death that he had thought of her with nothing but joy in his heart.

 

**

 

By dawn, Raven was asleep in a fresh bed, and Kurt dozed in an old wooden cradle Erik had dragged down from the attic two weeks before. Jean had refused to go to bed until she saw the baby just once, but was now sleeping soundly. Hank was driving home – evidence of the death of God in his trunk. Moira was in a spare room, so that if she were being watched, this would be considered a wild night of passion.

Erik lingered in Raven’s room the longest, marveling at the baby. Had he seriously thought of not accepting him, on any terms Raven chose to give? His feelings mattered so little in this. A small life needed looking after, and that was all there was to it.

Of course, there was no telling what Raven would ultimately choose. She was a mother now; she felt a kind of love nobody could ever have described to her before.

Erik walked back to their bedroom to find Charles staring out the window, deep in thought. He wrapped his arms around Charles from behind.

Charles murmured, “I thought I couldn’t take him, not knowing if we could keep him. With the weight of losing him over us all the time. But that’s what I asked you to do when we took Jean, isn’t it? Because we never really know.”

“Yes.”

 

**

 

“We have to watch her for infection,” Moira said the next morning, “but honestly, it’s almost spooky how quickly she’s recovering. I’d swear she’d given birth a week ago, not half a day. Do you think – that unusual gene she carries – ”

Erik had no idea, of course; nobody could at this point. The question was an invitation to speculate. “Maybe so. Whatever it is, I’m glad she’s feeling better.”

Moira frowned. She wore blue jeans and one of Charles’ shirts, which would no doubt please her watchers as much as it annoyed Erik. “You say that like you’re not glad at all.”

“The sooner she’s healthy, the sooner she’ll leave.” He ran one hand over his face; the few hours of sleep he’d snatched had done little to alleviate his exhaustion, though he was probably the least tired adult in the house. “The sooner she’s ready to leave, the sooner she makes her decision. And this decision is one she should think over.”

“Maybe,” Moira said, suddenly as brisk as any white-coated doctor in a hospital. “And maybe not. The way she’s behaving – I’ve seen it before. Mothers who choose adoption often want the process to go faster. They need that finality before they can start healing. That doesn’t mean they don’t waver later on – of course they do. A mother who isn’t raising her own child remains aware of that as long as she lives.” Her eyes no longer looked at Erik, but at some distant point, and he remembered what she’d said about a little boy named Kevin. “Don’t treat her like a china doll, okay? Raven’s a rational human being. As overwhelming as this is, she can make a rational choice. Trust her.”

“Okay,” Erik said. He would have put a comforting hand on her shoulder if he hadn’t thought Moira would scoff.

Instead she gave him her wickedest smile. “Now I’m going to take the walk of shame in your boyfriend’s clothes.”

“You are a pernicious woman.”

“I like that,” Moira called as she went downstairs, her hair bouncing with each step. “That’s my next T-shirt!” 

 

**

 

Erik held the baby. Charles did the talking. Raven watched all three of them, arms crossed in front of herself as though they could be a shield.

“If you’re sure this is what you want –” Charles said. Raven nodded.

Kurt was a funny little thing, almost elfin despite his shock of blue-black hair. Erik brushed his thumb along the soft crown of his head. He’d forgotten how it took you, this love of a newborn. The very smell and weight and softness of the baby were compelling enough to make the rest of the world seem very distant.

“—then we should choose a place in Canada. I could buy a lodge near the Rockies, something like that,” Charles said. It was one of the first times Erik had ever heard him carelessly mention spending a large sum of money. The circumstances called for it, Erik figured. “We’d make a habit of going there every Christmas, on his birthday, a few times a year. There’s no reason for the FBI to question a regular holiday. Moira’s arranging the birth certificate; if the FBI ever looks in the right place, they’ll know you were here, but we can claim we didn’t know any more than that.”

Raven nodded.

“And when you’re ready – ” Charles’ voice caught, and Erik knew love for the baby had already kindled inside him, too. “When you’re ready, and you have a home for Kurt, then he’ll come to you. We’ll take our time, make the transition work for him. And he’ll always know you as his mother. We’re his uncles, and we’re going to take the very best care of him we can, but Kurt’s always going to love you.”

Tears welled in Raven’s eyes, real tears, not the strange shimmer Erik sometimes glimpsed there. Roughly he said, “You have to be sure about this. Absolutely positive. If you’re hesitating, at all, we can figure something else out.”

Charles nodded in agreement, but Raven said, “No. This is the only way.”

“If you change your mind at any point – ”

“I won’t. It’s what’s best for Kurt.”

Jean began calling for someone, so Charles went to her, leaving Erik and Raven alone. He handed her the baby then, but she held Kurt for only a few seconds before returning him to his crib.

“Where will you go?” Erik said.

“Better if you don’t know.” She rose from the bed, startlingly steady for a woman who’d given birth not 24 hours previously.

“You don’t mean that you intend to – to go back to the life you were living before.”

“The world is changing, Erik. I’m going to be a part of it.”

How foolish he had been, to ever think he was the sum of her aspirations – the lone cause she had to strike out. Raven had taken on a fight she could never win, trying to shape the whole world into what she thought it should be, because she needed the battle more than the victory.

“You should put Kurt’s cradle in your room instead of mine tonight,” she said. “He shouldn’t get used to sleeping with me.” Of course she meant the exact opposite, and they both knew it, but Erik knew it would do no good to say so. She didn’t bend to his influence any longer.

He’d wanted Raven to get over him. She had. 

“It’s not that she doesn’t love Kurt,” Charles said as they went down the hallway together afterward. “It that she loves him so much.”

“I know.”

“She might never return, you realize.” The midday light slanted through the stairwell, filtered green and gold through a lone pane of stained glass.

“Is that what she’s thinking?” Erik was shocked despite himself.

“No. I’m not in her head. When Raven asked me to stay out, she meant it.” With a heavy sigh, Charles said, “It’s more what I know of Raven. The more deeply she loves – the more absolute her convictions become. With her, it’s so often all or nothing.”

Raven had not merely walked away from Erik when he was reunited with Charles; she had fled the house, the state, the entire life she’d led before. If she could not be the mother she wanted to be, she could refuse to take up the role at all – or she could now that she knew Kurt would be loved and cared for. That choice would destroy her, Erik thought; surely Raven knew it too. But she might choose anyway. It was so like her to smile across the roulette table, push her entire pile of chips onto one single square, and let it ride.

Erik had been like that too, once.

 

**

 

That night, they put the cradle beside their bed.

“Are you sure?” Charles said, Kurt asleep in his lap, as Erik fussed with the bedding.

“Yes, of course. It’s close enough that I could rock it with my foot, if he’s crying but just wants soothing.”  He held his hands out for Kurt; Charles shifted him over to Erik, but his hesitation showed.

“I thought – that’s something you used to do for Anya. It hurt you to remember it.”

“Not any longer,” Erik said. Once again he was surprised to have Charles not grasp precisely what he meant. He tucked Kurt in, and made up his mind. Enough of these misunderstandings. Minor and normal though they were, they had no place in Erik’s relationship with Charles. “I think it’s time you went back to listening to my thoughts.”

“Now?”

“Always.” Then he caught himself. “Sometimes I may want space to think things through for a while. If so, I’ll tell you. But Charles, you’ll always be welcomed back.”

Charles breathed out, an exhalation like someone struck. It was as if this simple invitation had cracked him open. Erik had realized that Charles felt their mental separation keenly, but he hadn’t fully understood until this moment. Erik, are you sure?”

“Very sure. You’re trying so hard to respect my boundaries that you’re hurting yourself. That’s a sign I’ve set the boundaries in the wrong place, isn’t it?”

“The occasional headache is no price to pay if it means you feel safe. Respected.”

Erik leaned across the bed and kissed him, a feather-soft touch. “I feel safe with you. But – being shut out – you haven’t felt safe with me, have you?”

“Safe, yes. But I suppose I … wondered.”

“Wondered what?”

“What it was you didn’t want me to see.” Charles shrugged. “Foolish things, mostly. Wondering whether you felt I was a burden.”

“A _burden_?” This made no sense.

“I’m old before my time, in some ways. The walking stick. Being tired so much. Not being able to make love in every way we did before. The scars. Even the hair.”

Charles’ rapidly receding hairline was much more noticeable to him than to Erik, apparently. “Damn your hair,” Erik said, voice rough, and he kissed Charles again. “If you’ve been troubled by anything as silly as that, then it’s all the more reason to stop locking yourself out.”

“But what you said about honesty – that you had to give it to me, that I couldn’t take it from you – Erik, as soon as you said it, I knew it was true. I haven’t held back only because you asked me to; I held back because I thought it was the right thing.”

“It was, when I asked you. It’s different now.” He took Charles’ hands. “What’s my honesty worth if I only give it to you on my terms? I give it to you absolutely, Charles. Be yourself. Let go.” 

Charles kissed him, this time, then pulled him down onto the bed. Erik Although Erik felt utterly exhausted, if Charles wanted to try –

“No, not that.” Charles bundled them both together beneath the blankets. “But here. This is something I’ve been building toward, I think.”

“What?”

Slowly Charles leaned his forehead toward Erik’s. He closed his eyes. And then –

\--Erik gasped as he felt Charles, not his body but Charles himself within his own mind. Charles’ love for him glowed, not like a flame but like a furnace, ever-burning, warming him from the inside out. It lit every moment they’d spent together, brought them all together, as if Erik were experiencing them each at once. The heights of that love astonished him. Humbled him. How could he ever have deserved this?

 _Now you know what I’ve asked myself every time I’ve felt your love for me_ , Charles thought inside his head.

They both laughed out loud in wonder at the same moment, and there was no point in asking whose wonder, whose laughter, because everything belonged to them both.

 

**

 

Moira had suggested bottle-feeding Kurt from the beginning, so that both they and he began as they meant to go on. Raven would have some tough times until her milk dried, but that, too, was best gotten over with, in Moira’s opinion. So they were up and down with him a couple of times that night – enough to debate moving their bedroom to the ground floor, the better to be near the kitchen – and as such should probably have heard something.

But Raven had chosen her moment well. By the time Jean ran into her room to tell her good morning, she was gone, along with her clothes and the bundle of cash Charles and Erik had been building for her, slowly enough that no pattern would be noticed in the withdrawals. Once Kurt was again sleeping and they had a moment to think, Erik went into her room to look for any evidence of where she might have gone. In one drawer he found the fringed scarf she’d worn around her head that first night; that was all she’d left behind, that and the note folded in the cloth.

 _Montreal this Christmas_ , she said. _Charles will know the place. We can take it from there._

If only he could have blamed himself for this, he thought. Then he would at least have had the illusion that it all could have gone differently. 

 _Good luck, Raven_ , he thought. The pain of losing her was no less for being familiar.

“I have faith,” Charles said, answering Erik’s unspoken thought as they rode downstairs in the elevator. “Raven’s always fulfilled my faith in her before. She will again.”

“Always faith,” Erik said.

“Always doubt.”

“Maybe not always.” The doors slid open; Erik offered Charles his arm. “I’m less certain than before. About there being – nothing.”

“Really?” Charles’ voice was soft.

“It’s a big universe. How depressing to think that humanity is the most intelligent thing in it. Even if I can’t see God the way you do – that still makes no sense to me, and it didn’t even when I was trying to believe – well. Who knows what’s possible?”

“Atheist to agnostic.” Charles nodded, but he was teasing now. “It only took eight years to get you that far, and we have a lifetime to go.”

Erik brushed his thumb against Charles’ cheek. “You’ve wanted this for me. Faith.”

“Of course I do.”

“But you’ve never tried to convert me. Not even when I was most ready to accept it. Not for a moment.”

“I only took the same care with your soul as you took with mine. Remember the night you visited me in the hospital, when you told me to pray again? You understood what was most important to me, and you protected that, regardless of your own beliefs. That meant more to me than you’ll ever know.” Charles covered Erik’s hand with his own, and though they were standing in the entrance hall, it was as intimate a moment as any they’d passed in bed.

 “And you’re not afraid for my immortal soul?”

“You’ve responded to persecution by working for justice. You answered hate with compassion. You made your losses part of your love. I couldn’t believe in a God that wouldn’t cherish a soul like that.”

They kissed again, slightly longer this time. When their lips parted, Erik said, “Do you want to know what I’d like to believe? If I could?”

“Please.” The way Charles said it told Erik that he was holding back his ability just slightly, enough to allow Erik to say it out loud and have it be heard for the first time.

“That our gifts aren’t random, but a beginning.” Erik spoke slowly, making sure he said precisely what he meant. “That your faith is a kind of beginning too. The way you believe, Charles – the love that guides you – sometimes I think that if enough people behaved that way, felt that way, the world would change. That would be the miracle. We wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a world with a loving God and one without, not then. Maybe that’s what God will be. He didn’t create us. We would create him, when we were ready.”

“The death of hate as the birth of God?” Charles smiled as he leaned his head against Erik’s chest. “I could live with that.”

 

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **
> 
> And that's the end. Writing this series has been an absolute joy, and I cannot thank enough every single person who's left feedback; you'll never know what it meant to me.


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